HATERS: Activists in Multan, Pakistan, burn a photo of President Obama yesterday, in reaction to the killing of Osama bin Laden. (AP)
President Obama has pointed the finger at Pakistan — insisting Osama bin Laden must have had friends in high places in that country, supposedly America’s ally in the war on terror.
“We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan,” Obama told CBS’s “60 Minutes” for an edition that aired last night.
“But we don’t know who or what that support network was. We don’t know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that’s something that we have to investigate and, more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate,” he said.
Obama’s remarks were his strongest yet suggesting that Pakistanis helped the terror chief hide in Abbottabad, a suburb of the country’s capital teeming with active and retired military and security personnel.
“We’ve already communicated [this] to [the Pakistanis], and they have indicated they have a profound interest in finding out what kinds of support networks bin Laden might have had,” Obama said.
A senior Pakistani official agreed that “elements of Pakistan intelligence — probably rogue or retired — were involved in aiding, abetting and sheltering” bin Laden, NBC reported.
The most likely suspects are members of the ISI, Pakistan’s shadowy intelligence agency, who grew up fighting alongside the mujahedeen in Afghanistan against the Russians, sources said.
Pakistani officials have denied knowing where bin Laden was.
But the Pakistan government, still embarrassed by the allegation, may have already retaliated against the United States by purportedly helping local media out a key CIA operative in Islamabad.
A private Pakistani TV station on Friday named the person it identified as the US spy chief there, as part of a story on a meeting between the CIA agent and the director of Pakistan’s spy service, The Wall Street Journal said.
The controversy swirled as “60 Minutes” aired the Obama interview, in which he elaborated about the level of secrecy surrounding the raid on bin Laden.
Obama was so intent on keeping the raid under wraps he left many top aides — and even the first lady — out of the loop.
“I didn’t tell my own family,” Obama said.