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A special death squad assassinated Ms Bhutto on the orders of former US VP who was running an executive assassination ring.AP
WASHINGTON: A special death squad assassinated Pakistans former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on the orders of former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, claims an American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
Mr Hersh, a Washington-based journalist who writes for the New Yorker magazine and other prominent media outlets, also claims that former US Vice President Dick Cheney was running an executive assassination ring throughout the Bush years. The cell reported directly to Mr Cheney.
In an interview to an Arab television channel, Mr Hersh indicated that the same unit killed Ms Bhutto because in an interview with al Jazeera TV on Nov. 2, 2007, she had said she believed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was already dead.
Ms Bhutto said she believed Omar Saeed Sheikh, an al Qaeda activist imprisoned in Pakistan for killing US journalist Daniel Pearl, murdered bin Laden.
But the interviewer, veteran British journalist David Frost, deleted her claim from the interview, Mr Hersh said.
The controversial US journalist told Gulf News on May 12 he believed Ms Bhutto was assassinated because the US leadership did not want bin Laden to be declared dead.
The Bush administration wanted to keep bin Laden alive to justify the presence of US army in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban, Mr Hersh said.
The Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist claimed that the unit also killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and the army chief of that country.
Mr Hariri and the Lebanese army chief were murdered for not safeguarding US interests and refusing to allow US to set up military bases in Lebanon. Ariel Sharon, the then prime minister of Israel, was also a key man in the plot, Mr Hersh said.
On March 11, Mr Hersh told a seminar at the University of Minnesota that the unit Mr Cheney headed was very deeply involved in extra-legal operations.
It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently, he explained. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it.
Its an executive assassination ring essentially, and its been going on and on and on, Mr Hersh stated. Under President Bushs authority, theyve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. Thats been going on, in the name of all of us.
Although Mr Cheney had ignored such allegations in the past, recently he began responding to these charges, making counter allegations against the Obama administration.
Last week in particular, Mr Cheney appeared almost daily on popular talk shows and also delivered a formal address at the American Enterprise Institute on the importance of interrogation techniques widely considered to be torture.
Once known for his reticence and low profile, Mr Cheney has now become his party's most audible voice.
Media commentators, however, attribute his sudden exuberance to the fear that if he did not defend himself, he may be prosecuted for authorising torture.
Mr Cheney knew, when he began his media assault, that the worst of the horrors inflicted upon detainees at his specific command are not yet widely known, said one commentator.
If the real stuff comes into full public light, he feared the general outrage will be so furious and all-encompassing that the Obama administration will have no choice but to seek prosecutions of those Bush-era officials who specifically demanded those barbaric acts be inflicted upon prisoners.
One blogger wrote that Mr Cheney not only authorised water-boarding, putting prisoners in confined spaces, pushing them, slapping them, putting bugs on them or demeaning them and their religious faith.
He quoted former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld telling a congressional panel in July of 2004 that if pictures of such acts were released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse.
Mr Hersh recently gave a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it.
WASHINGTON: A special death squad assassinated Pakistans former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on the orders of former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, claims an American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
Mr Hersh, a Washington-based journalist who writes for the New Yorker magazine and other prominent media outlets, also claims that former US Vice President Dick Cheney was running an executive assassination ring throughout the Bush years. The cell reported directly to Mr Cheney.
In an interview to an Arab television channel, Mr Hersh indicated that the same unit killed Ms Bhutto because in an interview with al Jazeera TV on Nov. 2, 2007, she had said she believed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was already dead.
Ms Bhutto said she believed Omar Saeed Sheikh, an al Qaeda activist imprisoned in Pakistan for killing US journalist Daniel Pearl, murdered bin Laden.
But the interviewer, veteran British journalist David Frost, deleted her claim from the interview, Mr Hersh said.
The controversial US journalist told Gulf News on May 12 he believed Ms Bhutto was assassinated because the US leadership did not want bin Laden to be declared dead.
The Bush administration wanted to keep bin Laden alive to justify the presence of US army in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban, Mr Hersh said.
The Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist claimed that the unit also killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafique Al Hariri and the army chief of that country.
Mr Hariri and the Lebanese army chief were murdered for not safeguarding US interests and refusing to allow US to set up military bases in Lebanon. Ariel Sharon, the then prime minister of Israel, was also a key man in the plot, Mr Hersh said.
On March 11, Mr Hersh told a seminar at the University of Minnesota that the unit Mr Cheney headed was very deeply involved in extra-legal operations.
It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently, he explained. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. ... Congress has no oversight of it.
Its an executive assassination ring essentially, and its been going on and on and on, Mr Hersh stated. Under President Bushs authority, theyve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. Thats been going on, in the name of all of us.
Although Mr Cheney had ignored such allegations in the past, recently he began responding to these charges, making counter allegations against the Obama administration.
Last week in particular, Mr Cheney appeared almost daily on popular talk shows and also delivered a formal address at the American Enterprise Institute on the importance of interrogation techniques widely considered to be torture.
Once known for his reticence and low profile, Mr Cheney has now become his party's most audible voice.
Media commentators, however, attribute his sudden exuberance to the fear that if he did not defend himself, he may be prosecuted for authorising torture.
Mr Cheney knew, when he began his media assault, that the worst of the horrors inflicted upon detainees at his specific command are not yet widely known, said one commentator.
If the real stuff comes into full public light, he feared the general outrage will be so furious and all-encompassing that the Obama administration will have no choice but to seek prosecutions of those Bush-era officials who specifically demanded those barbaric acts be inflicted upon prisoners.
One blogger wrote that Mr Cheney not only authorised water-boarding, putting prisoners in confined spaces, pushing them, slapping them, putting bugs on them or demeaning them and their religious faith.
He quoted former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld telling a congressional panel in July of 2004 that if pictures of such acts were released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse.
Mr Hersh recently gave a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it.
