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May 17th, 2015 
David Schulberg 
Following months of criticism over questionable co-operation with the NSA, Germany’s embattled intelligence agency, the BND, received a boost from a newspaper report alleging its importance in the identification and elimination of Osama bin Laden.
According to
theBild am Sonntag newspaper, the Federal
Intelligence Service, played a key part at two junctures prior to
the death of the 9/11 architect in May 2011.
READ MORE:
Germany provides NSA with staggering 1.3bn pieces of metadata per
month – report
First, an embedded BND agent – an employee of the Pakistani
security agency ISI – tipped off the German agency that bin Laden
was living under ISI observation. The US had been on bin Laden’s
trail since at least 2007, when it discovered the identity of his
courier, Ibrahim Saeed Ahmed, but had only indirect proof, even
weeks before it killed the Al Qaeda leader. According to a source
in the US intelligence, who spoke to Bild, the German information
had a “key role” in encouraging the White House to go
ahead with the SEAL raid that took out bin Laden.
The BND’s second contribution was in the run-up to the attack on
the Abottabad compound in northern Pakistan. From its listening
post in Bad Aibling in Bavaria, German security officers
intercepted all phone calls and emails coming in and out of the
part of Pakistan where bin Laden was housed. According to the
article, the US was afraid that either bin Laden’s associates, or
more likely, agents at ISI could warn the radical Islamist leader
of the imminent attack. As it was, the mission remained a secret
to those outside the Obama’s cabinet and the CIA.
While the revelations appear plausible in themselves, both Bild,
and other German news outlets have raised issues with their
timing.
Angela Merkel, who has been in power for a decade, has been under
pressure over links with the National Security Agency, dating
back 2002. From 2006, the BND was spying on what is now the
Airbus Group at the behest of the NSA, and later intercepted
communication relating to French politicians. Hundreds of
thousands of ‘selectors’ – pieces of data that can help identify
a target, whose communication has to be intercepted – were handed
over by the NSA to be searched for. While it appears that BND did
not indiscriminately hand over data they found them if it
concerned Germany itself, it did freely spy on its EU allies on
the behalf of Washington, despite Merkel saying that “spying
between friends is unacceptable,” prior to her last
re-election.
Earlier this month, Austria put forward a legal complaint against
the BND, while opposition politicians have said that the
revelations “undermine trust.” The Interior Ministry has
been on defensive, assuring the public that none of the
information obtained – even from private companies – constituted
industrial espionage, and promising that terms of co-operation
have been tightened up.
While the bin Laden revelations may remind the Germans of the
BND’s public utility, they also appear to raise more questions
about the events leading up to bin Laden’s death. Once again some
officials in Pakistan, a nominal ally, are presented as possible
bin Laden supporters, who appear to have sheltered him – at what
was a top military location – and could have saved him. This has
never been admitted by the White House.
It also lends credence to the assertions by investigative
journalist Seymour Hersh, published also week, that the ISI may
have kept bin Laden under house arrest, though does not confirm
his belief that the Pakistani intelligence agency willingly gave
up bin Laden, for what was a staged murder, more than a heroic
spec op.
“The reality is that President Obama did authorize a raid to
get bin Laden,” Hersh told RT earlier this week. “And
everything we were told after that is simply not true.”
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Germany’s under-fire intelligence agency claims it played ‘key role’ in getting bin Laden
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