BackAmerica acted alone during Osama bin Laden raid: Former US envoy Munter
Cameron Munter on recent revelations that Pakistani intelligence had given up Osama bin Laden's hiding place to the US for money and other issues
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New Delhi: Cameron Munter was US ambassador to Pakistan from October 2010 to July 2012—the period that saw a downward spiral in US-Pakistan relations starting with the arrest of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contractor Raymond Davis for killing two men in Lahore who, he said, attacked him; the Abbottabad raid that left Osama bin Laden dead; and the US killing about 30 Pakistani soldiers in November 2011 along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
As the new president and CEO of the New York-based East West Institute, Munter was in New Delhi as part of a private initiative to bring together business leaders from Afghanistan, India and Pakistan, called Afghanistan Reconnected. In an interview, Munter spoke about the controversy over recent revelations by journalist Seymour Hersh that Pakistani intelligence had given up Osama bin Laden’s hiding place for money and other issues. Edited excerpts:
There are a lot of questions now about the Osama bin Laden raid in May 2011 because of the Seymour Hersh article that says that Pakistani military intelligence shared or sold information on Bin Laden’s location. Is there any truth to this article?
You are referring to Mr Seymour Hersh’s recent article in the London Review of Books that basically made the claim that there was a large conspiracy between the Pakistani authorities and the American authorities ... so that the claims that America acted alone were not true and in fact America acted with Pakistan and kept it a secret.
I don’t find this argument convincing and I don’t find his evidence credible. Everyone respects Seymour Hersh, he is a very serious person and he opened many investigations in Vietnam and in Iraq, so we take him seriously. But when you read what he says (in the bin Laden case) he is not giving information that is, in my mind, backed up by evidence. The idea, for example that there was an ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) agent waiting for the (US) team to arrive (in Abbottabad), there is no evidence of that. It just seems crazy. There may have been an enormous cover-up, there may have been an enormous plot. All I can say (is) I am honoured because the plot was kept from the American ambassador. If it was a big plot that (President Barack) Obama and (then secretary of state) Hillary (Clinton) had to fool me, they fooled me very well.
What Mr Hersh says, what I understand is that there was an ISI intelligence official who walked in, I presume into the embassy. You were the US ambassador heading the embassy in Pakistan. Was there any such ISI official who came in with information?
I was there that night. I have seen all the evidences. I was aware of the raid and I had never heard any of this. There are two different things. One is that there was a so-called source, a walk-in source. This person told the Americans, the Americans were in touch with Pakistanis for months ahead of time and coordinated the raid. I was there in Pakistan. It would be credible to me that a source would walk in, that I wouldn’t know about. But the fact that we would be in touch with the Pakistanis and co-ordinate with them throughout and that the (US) President lied and Hillary lied and everyone who was in on this just lied and I never ever heard about it and I never ever sensed it and no one that I talk to never ever sensed this, is not credible to me. He (Hersh) claims for example in the article, that there is no treasure trove of information that was taken out. When I was in the government, I have seen a great amount of information about this, a great amount of intelligence, there was never any trace of this enormous conspiracy. Maybe there were many people in the plot to fool the American ambassador and they succeeded.
Is that possible?
I don’t think it is very likely. I think you can always come up with conspiracies but I am a believer in common sense.
Ambassador, the way you exited from your post in Pakistan. Again, there were a whole lot of reports about it. One of them says that you have met the Jamat-Ud-Dawa chief Hafeez Saeed. Another quotes you saying that there was no bounty announced on his head. Could you shed some light on this?
These reports are not true. They are absolutely untrue. The day I announced I was retiring, there was I believe an Indian blog that claimed that I was retiring in protest to Hillary Clinton about something. And it is one of those kinds of things we talk of about Seymour Hersh where you say you have anonymous sources to say many things. This has absolutely nothing to do with my decision. I have never had a disagreement on any of these kinds of issues with Hillary Clinton. I am still I think on very good terms with Hillary Clinton. So, all of this speculation is utterly untrue.
Coming to your various reported disagreements with various people in the American administration. One of your reported disagreements was with former CIA chief and then defense secretary Leon Panetta. Is that true, that you disagreed with him on the use of drones?
There have been a number of things written on that; I urge people to take a look at those things because there was a strong debate about that issue. The issue I was concerned about was that we should make sure that in the efforts to fight terrorism, we are not indiscriminate in the way we deal with things, and I am specifically referring to drone warfare. The accusation, whether it is fair or not, of indiscriminate drone warfare was very damaging to us with the public.
Now, that doesn’t mean there isn’t any important role for drone warfare. So, these questions were strongly debated in the US government and there are various accounts that come out in books. But I am not at liberty to comment on those because they are too sensitive. I feel very strongly that one of the things we need to do is to balance the very real need for counter terrorism with long-terms needs for how you deal with the stability, democracy and prosperity of a country as big and as important as Pakistan. So there was always that tension.
You were there in Pakistan from 6 October 2010 to 24 July 2012. What was the most difficult part during these months? You had Raymond Davis, Osama bin laden, you had the Salala attack; then you had drones in the middle...
During that time, every sincere effort that the Americans made to build long-term relationships with Pakistan not just based on counter-terrorist cooperation but to build and support civilian democracy, this was badly damaged during the period by (CIA contractor) Raymond Davis case, by results of fallout of Osama raid, by Salala raid (killing of almost 30 Pakistani soldiers by US in a case of friendly fire in November 2011 ), which was a real tragedy so that what made the whole time difficult was that the American effort to try to build a relationship of trust with Pakistan, to try to look on Pakistan’s long-time concerns, to work on energy, to work on education, to work on things that Pakistan cares about, to make Pakistan a successful democracy that actually could encourage them to get along with neighbours like India -- This goal was undercut by a series of things that happened and was just a difficult time. It was just a very difficult time and disappointing time because what it means is the task is still there.
If I could do (so), I would love to turn it to the work we are doing here. The East-West institute of which I’m the new president and CEO in New York ... is an institute that tries to look at the intractable problems and it works not just to give solutions but to bring our people together. We have a group of Indians, Pakistanis and Afghans who are experts, dealing with the topic of Afghanistan Reconnected—looking more on the question of security environment but also the economic environment. So, you have Afghanistan that has enough prosperity and is talking about energy, transport, inventors, trade.
Linked to Afghanistan Reconnected is my question on the Af-Pak policy. How do you look at the prospects for this region given the fact that you have many imponderables?
Af-Pak is not a wise way to do things. When you look at it, what it intended to do that organization tended to focus on the fight in Afghanistan and in my mind that is a piece of it but as I have been saying, there is a broader set of issues, it is equally important.
We may talk about difficulties about the border but there would be no long-run peace in this region, until India and Pakistan are able to have some sort of accommodation.
I think we have to be patient and tolerant but friends of India and Pakistan like the US need to help. We can’t just do Af-Pak—I am very vehement about that—it has to be regional and to go beyond that, we may also have to think about the future, what is the role of Iran, the role of China.
All these questions are regional and that leads to the second question you asked: what is the vision of this part of the world?
Our vision is, this is going to be a place that needs to have structures that were built up, that were regional in order to be stable. The bilateral issues—US-Pakistan, India-Pakistan, China-Pakistan—this only reinforces in my mind the overwhelming element of bilateral diplomacy, only reinforces difficulties or the inability to solve the fundamental questions—water, electricity, transportation and trade. All these changes are necessary and they can’t be done alone.
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