Pakistan Secretly OK'd bin Laden Hit—10 Years Ago

Gave Bush permission for raid by Pervez Musharraf
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted May 9, 2011 5:17 PM CDT
Osama bin Laden Raid: Pakistan OK'd Hit on al-Qaeda Leader 10 Years Ago
Former Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf is outraged by the bin Laden hit -- which he reportedly agreed to 10 years ago.   (AP Photo/Press Information Department,HO)

Pakistan is just furious about the US' unilateral raid that took out Osama bin Laden—even though Pakistan agreed 10 years ago to let the US carry out just such a strike on its territory. As the Guardian reports, Pervez Musharraf and George W. Bush struck the secret deal in 2001, just after the US lost bin Laden in Tora Bora. Musharraf, currently in exile in London, has been among the loudest critic of the raid, calling it a "violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan."

But perhaps Musharraf doth protest too much: "There was an agreement between Bush and Musharraf that if we knew where Osama was, we were going to come and get him," says a former senior US official. "The Pakistanis would put up a hue and cry, but they wouldn't stop us." Pakistan's complaints are the "public face" of the pact, says the official. "We knew they would deny this stuff." (More Osama bin Laden stories.)

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