Now I finally understand how Osama bin Laden escaped our scope for all these years - he was hiding in the open air, in the backyard of one of our supposed allies. Put this in context: Pakistan is a police state where foreigners are not unnoticed, even when they live behind the high walls of a compound. In addition, the compound where bin Laden was killed Monday at the start of an American raid all but contiguous to the base of the 2nd Brigade of the Pakistani army. I can't help but suspect that some Pakistani officers, at a certain level, were carrying bin Laden. And Pakistan itself? I do not have a clue, but I suspect the worst on that one too.
When bin Laden disappeared first off the coast of the U.S. end 2001 to Tora Bora radar, many people entertained every conspiracy theory stupid that they could imagine, from the idea that the al-Qaeda Chief was in Riyadh as a guest of the Saudi royal family to the idea that he was at area 51protected by the CIA. During a visit to Islamabad, where three years ago, I asked a U.S. correspondent local which had been in country for five years where she thought that bin Laden was. She looked out the window at the House across the street: "Perhaps", she said. "" Who knows this country "? (See the photos of the hiding places of bin Laden in Pakistan).
The ill-informed explanation, that I kept back was that bin Laden had been killed some time and buried, his disciples not to say a word because they needed for him to remain a mystery - beacon for jihadists met to follow. With respect to the digital audio recordings that bin Laden made over the years, they are easily manipulated to make them sound current and give the impression that bin Laden was alive. The explanation that he lived at the bottom of a cave in ungovernable tribal regions of Pakistan was certainly thin.
Although I had left the CIA before the September 11 attacks, I can very well imagine his internal conversations on the comings and goings of Osama bin Laden. Whenever a junior analyst suggested that al-Qaida hiding in Pakistan proper - perhaps in an area of military cantonment like the one in which he was killed - an old hand would have jumped him, telling him that he was too far-fetched to discuss same. "This is not in the interest of Pakistan to hide the bin Ladens", the argument would go. "They receive too much money on our part." The generals who run the country are more intelligent than this. And anyway, where is the intelligence? "There is no interception of bin Laden calling Pakistan appropriate; No defectors showing him put there. (See pictures of Osama bin Laden).
No surprise, of course, Ben Laden after Tora Bora went off digital network. No no emails, no phones, no Twitter. He apparently didn't even TV compound he lived and even buried his trash. Which may explain the absence of hard intelligence and reason as his comings and goings were a blank slate – at least, apparently, until a messaging service was followed by the compound.
Capture Bin Laden in Pakistan, was a brilliant intelligence coup. Administration brilliantly, he played retrieve the corpse of Osama bin Laden to prove the man dead. But, being a person who is never satisfied, I'd explain why I am wrong to suspect official Pakistani complicity. Or, if I am correct, explain what is happening in this country and, if anything, we have intend to do about it. (Watch the announcement of President Obama of the death of Osama Ben Laden.)
Robert Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer, is intelligence of the TIME.com columnist and author of see No Evil and the devil we know: dealing with the new Iranian superpower.
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