Pentagon Breaks Silence on Pakistani Role [View All]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/06/world/asia/06pentagon.html

WASHINGTON — A top Pentagon official said Thursday that Obama administration officials “do not have any definitive evidence at this point” that Pakistan knew that Osama bin Laden was living in a compound in a garrison city only 35 miles from Islamabad, but she said that Pakistan would have to work hard to rebuild relations with the United States Congress.

In the public comments by a Pentagon official on the raid and its aftermath, Michele A. Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said that she had “a very candid conversation” with top Pakistani military officials at the Pentagon on Monday during a previously scheduled meeting. She said she had urged them to take clear steps to show Congress that they were committed to fighting terrorism and working with the United States.

As an example, Ms. Flournoy said that Pakistanis should help make sense of whatever the United States learned from the trove of computer files recovered by Navy Seals from bin Laden’s compound.


After Bin Laden’s death was announced, and it became clear that he had been living in a large compound near a military academy for some time, perhaps years, angry members of Congress who are in charge of the billions of dollars in American military aid that flows to Pakistan have issued furious assessments of the Pakistani Army as either incompetent or duplicitous. Continuing aid is certain to come under sharp scrutiny.