Panetta denies Seymour Hersh's story on bin Laden raid

[bemildred]

There it is, would Panetta lie?

(CNN)Former CIA Director Leon Panetta says investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is wrong.

Panetta discredits Hersh's report published in the London Review of Books, which alleges that the Pakistani government knew in advance about the United States' raid on Osama bin Laden's Abbottabad compound.

At a news conference Monday put on by his institute at the Monterey Conference Center in California, Panetta said he had not read Hersh's article but responded to the claims in the report, saying Pakistan did not know about the raid in advance. He had been the CIA Director at the time of the attack.

"I can assure you bin Laden was not in the custody of Pakistan," he said, adding, "and was operating, obviously, in this compound."

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/12/politics/leon-panetta-seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden/

[Thinkingabout]

1. Would Hersh lie, yes he has before.

[grasswire]

2. the quote doesn't match the claim.

parse, people, parse

[bemildred]

3. Yah, lots of parsing going on. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. I have an added thought on this

knowing a tad of US History (Bay of Pigs, I don't know the Gulf of Tonkin), I won't be around for the declassification, but we will not really know until that happens. It might be as the WH said, it might be what Hersh is saying... likely somewhere in between...

But I will be pushing daisies by then.

[tritsofme]

5. Hersh has descended into truther/birther territory.

His story is just that ridiculous.

[MohRokTah]

6. ISn't Hersh scheduled for Alex Jones any day now?

It's where his bullshit belongs.

[frylock]

7. Hersh isn't the only reporter making such claims..

and yeah, if you can't trust Panetta....

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/12/magazine/the-detail-in-seymour-hershs-bin-laden-story-that-rings-true.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/seymour-hersh-plagiarism-accusation-117827.html

[bemildred]

8. Plagiarism doesn't seem the right word there.

Two good reporters on the same story OUGHT to come up with the same plot line, so to speak.

And yes, they seem to corroborate each other, esp. if Hersh can show he arrived at it independently. But he may not be able to do that.