Former German Intelligence chief on OBL, December 2010

Here's a retrospectively very accurate report based on an interview with the former German Intelligence Officer tasked with hunting Bin Laden, Dr. August Hanning. It's from December 2010 ie before OBL's assassination in May 2011.

We have got information always on where he was. And that’s the problem — days, week later.

“I knew there was a chance in Afghanistan I think immediately before Tora Bora and in Tora Bora … I think there was a real opportunity to catch him and afterwards in Pakistan it became very difficult,” Hanning told CNN.

Hanning, who was appointed State Secretary in the German Federal Interior Ministry at the end of 2005 — one of the country’s most senior counter-terrorism positions — retired late last year.

He says he agrees with recent comments by an unnamed senior NATO official to CNN last month that bin Laden is alive and well in Pakistan.

“I think there are still a lot of hints that he is in Pakistan, and according to my estimates he is in the tribal areas in the region near Peshawar: the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan,” Hanning told CNN.

Pakistani officials consistently deny bin Laden’s presence on their soil. Hanning believes rogue elements in their intelligence service, the ISI, are hiding him.

“It’s hard for me to believe that they know nothing,” he said, and in some ways the al Qaeda leader is useful to Pakistan. “So long [as] bin Laden is in Pakistan so Pakistan will get support from the Americans’ fight against terrorism.”

And Pakistan would be in a bind if bin Laden were caught, because to some Pakistanis he is a hero. “If he were caught the Pakistani government would be in a very difficult situation, because the Americans would ask the Pakistanis to extradite him.”

Hanning believes bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan is one of the United States’ most delicate diplomatic problems and one that needs to be solved before U.S. troops can safely withdraw from Afghanistan — because given the chance al Qaeda would return to Afghanistan.
SOURCE