NBC News Walks Back Report That Pakistani Officer Gave Bin Laden's Location To CIA
NEW YORK -- NBC News has walked back its Monday report that a Pakistani intelligence officer provided the CIA with Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts a year before the U.S. raid in May 2011, a claim that ran counter to the Obama administration’s narrative of events but supported a key detail in an explosive new story by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.
On Monday afternoon, NBC News cited “two intelligence sources” claiming the Pakistani officer, a walk-in informant, “told the CIA where the most wanted man in the world was hiding.” NBC also reported that those two sources, along with a third, said “the Pakistani government knew where bin Laden was hiding all along.” The Obama administration has maintained that bin Laden was found through tracking his couriers to the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
Monday evening, chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell -- who shared a byline on the story with investigative unit head Richard Esposito and reporters Matthew Cole and Robert Windrem –- reported the information on the "NBC Nightly News" and MSNBC's "All In with Chris Hayes." The network heavily promoted the scoop, with an on-screen chyron during nearly all of Hayes’ 16-minute segment, featuring appearances by Hersh and Mitchell, that read: “NBC News: Pakistani Asset Told CIA Where Bin Laden Was Hiding.”
But NBC News has now added an editor’s note to the story that diminishes the Pakistani officer's involvement and lacks the earlier specificity. Instead of pointing the CIA to bin Laden whereabouts, NBC News now reports that the officer “provided information vital to the hunt for bin Laden."
Continued at Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/13/nbc-bin-laden-walks-back_n_7275810.html?utm_hp_ref=med
= new reply since forum marked as read
