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Please focus on the highlighted parts related to the ISI providing the US intelligence that led to OBL - the other parts of the article can be discussed in other threads that have those discussions ongoing:
========================
IN August 2010, officers from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency monitored a suspicious phone call in which a man speaking Arabic asked a contact in the Middle East to send money to an account in Pakistan.
The agency had the transcripts translated and handed them to America's CIA.
"The US has much better technology than we have and we thought they might be able to take it further," a senior officer tells The Weekend Australian. at his grey-stone headquarters in Islamabad.
On previous occasions, the Americans had responded to similar intelligence by asking the Pakistanis to launch joint operations in which key insurgent figures hiding out in Pakistan were captured.
"This time we heard nothing back," the officer says.
The Pakistanis thought the investigation had gone nowhere.
But they now believe the dossier handed to the CIA was the key to ending the 10-year search for Osama bin Laden, with the raid by US Navy SEALs on the al-Qa'ida leader's hideout in Abbottabad in May last year.
In a series of exclusive interviews, senior officers from Pakistan's army and the ISI have told The Weekend Australian that the handling of the bin Laden episode was part of an extraordinary trail of blunders and tragedies that has badly damaged the relationship between Pakistan and its superpower ally.
Pakistan's government invited this newspaper to examine four key events -- the killing of two Pakistanis in Lahore by CIA contractor Raymond Davis, the operation that killed bin Laden, the claim by retiring US Defence chief Admiral Mike Mullen that the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network operated as a virtual arm of the ISI, and then the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in US airstrikes.
PAKISTAN, nuclear-armed, politically fragile and increasingly alarmed about the possibility of being left by the West with a festering war on its border, is caught in this dangerous tangle of events with serious consequences for the region. The courier who made the fateful phone call heard by the ISI was an al-Qa'ida facilitator, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
Various accounts of the bin Laden raid suggest that by the time they received the Pakistani transcripts, the US already suspected someone important was living in the Abbottabad complex.
But the lack of acknowledgement of Pakistan's role in bin-Laden's apprehension and the assumption by many Americans that Islamabad was hiding the world's most wanted terrorist has boosted resentment in Islamabad that the nation is being viewed as a second-class ally or a potential enemy in the US-led war on terror.
The Pakistanis insist they did not know bin Laden was at Abbottabad until the Americans swooped and killed him. They admit the fact that bin Laden lived for some time under the noses of Pakistan's military was a monumental intelligence failure.
"But please remember that the first lead to the CIA was given by ISI operators," the Pakistani officer says.
"Somehow the CIA decided to go it alone, seeing it was such a big catch. It is unclear whether the operation was intended to take the full credit for the Americans or to discredit Pakistan."
It is likely that once the US confirmed bin Laden was the prize, they were not prepared to risk anything going wrong, and those in direct control of the operation also considered the possibility of a costly ambush of the cream of their special forces too big a risk.
Pakistan is a crucial ally to the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, providing a vital road route for the vast military supplies the coalition forces need and mounting joint offensives with the coalition against the insurgents. But it is also regularly accused of supporting insurgents and orchestrating attacks in Afghanistan -- which it strenuously denies.
In the lead-up to the attack on bin Laden, the Pakistanis say that late last year they noticed an increase in US activity inside their country that culminated in the shooting of two local men by Raymond Davis in January.
The CIA contractor was sitting in his car at a busy intersection in Lahore and told police the men pulled alongside him on a motorcycle. One brandished a pistol, Davis said.
The American shot the men through a closed window.
When one man ran for his life Davis got out of his car and shot him in the back.
It has been claimed he fired more shots at the men as they lay on the ground and used his phone to photograph them. Davis also made a phone call seeking help but a vehicle full of Americans racing towards him drove the wrong way down a busy street and fatally injured a motorcyclist. The would-be rescuers fled to the US consulate and were flown out of the country along with their Pakistani driver and his family.
Pakistani officials say they are convinced Davis killed the men to shut them up. They believe his "cover" in Pakistan was as a low-level spy gathering information about insurgent groups and the two men he killed were probably sources of information who may have been looking for money from him. The ISI believes Davis was part of a US network trying to find bin Laden or possibly monitoring local nuclear facilities.
After huge pressure from the US government and a payment of at least $1 million to the families of the men he killed, Davis was sent home where he was arrested for assault in Colorado after allegedly belting a motorist during a row over a parking space.
In May came the US raid that killed bin Laden and saw Pakistan's military held up to ridicule at home because it had not prevented it.
In an atmosphere of anger and confusion left by those episodes, and while terrorist bomb blasts continued in Pakistan's cities, came the latest tragedy.
In November, US aircraft made a series of attacks on two Pakistani military posts near the border, killing 24 soldiers and wounding 15.
US investigators said later US and Afghan special forces preparing to raid a nearby village had been fired on and called in air support. Pakistani commanders called the coalition HQ and said their troops were being attacked by aircraft.
The attacks stopped, leaving several Pakistanis wounded.
A US liaison officer then asked the Pakistanis if they had troops in the area but fed incorrect information into his laptop and gave the wrong location. It was 14km out and the Pakistanis said, correctly, they had no troops in that area.
Then the helicopters and fixed wing aircraft returned and, the commander of the 150,000-strong Pakistani Army corps that guards the border says, they "plastered" the two Pakistani posts, killing 24 soldiers.
"The first incident could have been a mistake but not the second," says Lieutenant General Khalid Rabbani.
Rabbani says with their sophisticated night vision equipment, the US forces would have been able to see clearly that the posts were occupied by men in uniform and not insurgents.
"That is why we conclude it was an intentional punishing of the posts for reasons best known to our American friends."
US liaison officers working along the border with the Pakistani army were not informed US special forces would be in the area and so the Pakistanis were not told. It is likely trust had reached such a low ebb that the US thought the Pakistanis might tip off the insurgents.
Because they did not know friendly troops were around, the Pakistani soldiers in the posts continued with their practice of firing short bursts of "speculative fire" into the surrounding landscape. Rabbani says that was common to cover gaps in the defence.
The Australian army does not use speculative fire because of concerns it might hit unintended targets.
Rabbani concedes the Americans may have thought that fire was directed at them but he says that would not have happened if the US forces had liaised with the Pakistanis.
"If there was an American patrol in that area, why didn't they co-ordinate. The rules of the business are very clear. The moment we are on foot and we move out we inform them."
IN September last year, Admiral Mullen said publicly what officials had often claimed privately -- that the Haqqani network, the aggressive Taliban affiliate operating in the east of Afghanistan, was a virtual arm of Pakistan's main intelligence agency.
That claim was strongly denied by Pakistan and the US later backed away from it. Other coalition officials say they believed Mullen overstated the situation.
Rabbani says the claim was ridiculous. "I must say that a person as senior as Admiral Mullen on retirement went wonky.
"Why did he not say that while he was sitting here?" He gestures around his office.
Rabbani says Mullen met local commanders "umpteen times" but did not make that claim to them.
"On retirement, while he's frustrated about what's been done in Afghanistan, he would now like to shift the blame on others," Rabbani says.
The general says Pakistan's failure to find bin Laden was a serious intelligence breakdown but that fell far short of the al-Qa'ida leader being deliberately hidden with official sanction.
"He never used any communications equipment, kept movements to a minimum in a closed environment and never saw the sky for months or years," Rabbani says.
He makes a comparison with the September 11 bombers living in the US and training there for the attacks. "If that could happen in the US, then how could this not have happened here?"
But Pakistani officials do concede that small numbers of former officers, aligned to the insurgents decades ago when these groups were Western allies fighting the Russians, might still be helping them unofficially.
The officers describe how thousands of their security personnel have been killed and wounded over the past decade fighting terrorists. Attacks on mosques have killed many soldiers at prayer along with their wives and children. Those killed include 78 ISI members.
"These people are monsters. Why would we support them?" says an ISI official.
The officers see their country as a frontline state in the war on terror and are dismayed that the West is not more appreciative of what they've achieved and the price Pakistan has paid in lives.
They're aware of the strong belief in the US that Pakistan was hiding bin Laden and they sense a view among many Americans that when the 24 Pakistani troops were killed, the Pakistanis deserved it.
The officers deeply resent Western claims that they support the insurgency. Over the past decade, the army, frontier corps and police have lost well over 4000 men killed and thousands more wounded.
"If we have such great and strong connections with these people, then why are so many of us being killed?" says the ISI officer. "And we would hardly be attacking the militants as vigorously as we have if we were supporting them."
In Pakistan's tribal areas since 2007, the army says it has killed 11,898 insurgents.
"This is what we've inflicted on them and still we are told we are their friends," the ISI officer says.
Pakistan has paid a huge economic and social cost. In the first 11 months of 2011, there were 1489 insurgent attacks in the Swat and FATA areas, including 39 suicide bombings. But it is now considered safe to drive through some of the fought-over areas between Peshawar and Swat without a military escort.
The officers say the Pakistan army was for a time co-ordinating attacks on insurgents on its side of the border with coalition attacks from Afghanistan in a "hammer and anvil" strategy and say they will move soon to clear out North Waziristan, where many members of the Haqqani network are living.
But they say the coalition in Afghanistan has indicated it is concentrating on clearing populated areas in the south and is not yet ready to provide the "anvil"along the border opposite North Waziristan.
The generals acknowledge that they've suffered many of their casualties while battling the Pakistan Taliban, who are mainly aggrieved tribesmen from their own mountain areas.
ALONG this 1208km stretch of border with Afghanistan, towering mountains drop thousands of metres into deep valleys. It's an area almost impossible to control.
Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, FATA, was the training ground of the mujahidin during the war against the Soviets which, with US help, was turned into an Islamic jihad against the communists.
"Once the Soviets left, the entire world forgot about this area," says Rabbani. "And unfortunately we also forgot about those areas of FATA and all that was happening there."
With no development, high unemployment, a warlike culture and ample weapons, resentment festered and an insurgency emerged among the Pashtun tribes on both sides of the arbitrary colonial border, the Durand Line, which bisects villages.
"These people kept growing in number and finally they became so omnipotent that it was a threat not only to the area but also to Pakistan," says Rabbani.
"Fighting there is a nightmare."
Soldiers serve here for 30 months at a time compared with six- to 12-month rotations for NATO forces, and fatigue and equipment wear and tear are serious issues.
In a Pakistan weary of war, there is a yearning for peace and acceptance by the world. As the security situation slowly improves, Pakistanis talk about life being better now than in the days of General Pervez Musharraf's dictatorship.
Television news leads off with a story about a bomb blast in Karachi with tragic footage of a young woman on a stretcher. Then it moves on to how Pakistan is doing in the cricket and then to an item about Lady Gaga. "We love Lady Gaga," explains a young man.
Security checkpoints are everywhere in Islamabad but many carry signs saying "Sorry for the inconvenience".
And in Islamabad's social circles, there's a bad-taste joke suggesting that after years cooped up in a house with three wives, bin Laden himself tipped off the Americans to come and get him.
As Pakistan struggles with its latest transition from military rule to democracy and greater press freedom, concern remains among many civilians that the army and its security arm continue to wield too much power.
Some Pakistanis claim the ISI was responsible for the murder in May last year of local journalist and author Syed Saleem Shahzad.
On May 22, soon after the Abbottabad raid, insurgents attacked Pakistan Naval Air Station-Mehran outside Karachi and destroyed two aircraft. Shahzad wrote a story saying naval officers had told him that the ease with which the attackers gained access to the base indicated that al-Qa'ida had infiltrated navy ranks.
Members of the feisty Pakistani media have said the agency was angry about that claim but the ISI says it did not kill him and had no reason to do so.
The Australian was told by non-ISI sources that others may have had more motive to kill Shahzad than the spy agency.
In recent weeks, Shahzad interviewed a key al-Qa'ida commander, Ilyas Kashmiri, in a distant part of the tribal areas.
Kashmiri was killed in a US drone strike two days later and investigators say it's possible the insurgents thought the journalist was tracked to the meeting or that he let slip crucial information that led NATO to Kashmiri.
That would give people other than ISI good reason to kill him, they say.
In a major offensive in 2009, the Pakistani army cleared thousands of insurgents out of the Swat Valley. Captured gunmen were jailed but the army set up deradicalisation centres where hundreds of low-level Taliban helpers, who may have cooked or kept watch for the militants, are being told by moderate religious teachers that Islam is a religion of peace and that suicide bombing is contrary to the teachings of the Koran.
At the Swat Valley centre, the mainly young men have debriefing sessions with psychiatrists and are being taught to be motor mechanics, jewellery makers, tailors and computer operators.
On weekends, they can socialise with their families.
In another centre, teenagers recruited as suicide bombers are being deradicalised by teams of psychologists. One 14-year-old's bomb vest failed to detonate and others were brought to the authorities by their families.
The border war goes both ways. The officers concede that hundreds of Afghan fighters are living on Pakistani territory and they say the rugged terrain makes it hard to stop their cross-border raids.
But members of the Pakistani Taliban, hundreds of fighters controlled by Mullah Maulana Fazlullah who escaped into Afghanistan after Pakistan's Swat Valley offensive, have carried out attacks from Afghanistan on Pakistani posts, killing dozens of police and auxiliaries.
A big issue for Australian commanders in Afghanistan is the huge proportion of the fertiliser used in the improvised bombs coming from Pakistan. The IEDs are the biggest killers of coalition and Afghan troops and civilians.
Pakistani officials say it is virtually impossible to keep track of every bag once they are sold to farmers. "They carry it on their bikes to wherever they want it. How can you stop that?"
Tracking systems are being improved with the help of Australia and other countries but insurgents are cashed up enough to buy all or part of a small farmer's fertiliser supply by paying him the equivalent of what he'd get for his crop.
A senior ISI officer says Pakistan has serious concerns about coalition strategy in Afghanistan, especially night raids on the Taliban by special forces, and he doubts that it can succeed.
"You need a dialogue. You can't keep killing people. You kill a terrorist and you make people who are innocent into terrorists," he says.
The official says the coalition underestimates their enemy. "They think they're brutes and they don't have minds. We may be uneducated but we're not butchers. There's a difference between a brutal killer and an illiterate who's a little rigid.
"In the end, you'll all go away leaving the problem to us."
Brendan Nicholson travelled through the Swat Valley and to Peshawar and was granted rare access to senior levels of Pakistan's military and intelligence services for this exclusive report.
Cookies must be enabled | The Australian
========================
IN August 2010, officers from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency monitored a suspicious phone call in which a man speaking Arabic asked a contact in the Middle East to send money to an account in Pakistan.
The agency had the transcripts translated and handed them to America's CIA.
"The US has much better technology than we have and we thought they might be able to take it further," a senior officer tells The Weekend Australian. at his grey-stone headquarters in Islamabad.
On previous occasions, the Americans had responded to similar intelligence by asking the Pakistanis to launch joint operations in which key insurgent figures hiding out in Pakistan were captured.
"This time we heard nothing back," the officer says.
The Pakistanis thought the investigation had gone nowhere.
But they now believe the dossier handed to the CIA was the key to ending the 10-year search for Osama bin Laden, with the raid by US Navy SEALs on the al-Qa'ida leader's hideout in Abbottabad in May last year.
In a series of exclusive interviews, senior officers from Pakistan's army and the ISI have told The Weekend Australian that the handling of the bin Laden episode was part of an extraordinary trail of blunders and tragedies that has badly damaged the relationship between Pakistan and its superpower ally.
Pakistan's government invited this newspaper to examine four key events -- the killing of two Pakistanis in Lahore by CIA contractor Raymond Davis, the operation that killed bin Laden, the claim by retiring US Defence chief Admiral Mike Mullen that the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network operated as a virtual arm of the ISI, and then the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in US airstrikes.
PAKISTAN, nuclear-armed, politically fragile and increasingly alarmed about the possibility of being left by the West with a festering war on its border, is caught in this dangerous tangle of events with serious consequences for the region. The courier who made the fateful phone call heard by the ISI was an al-Qa'ida facilitator, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
Various accounts of the bin Laden raid suggest that by the time they received the Pakistani transcripts, the US already suspected someone important was living in the Abbottabad complex.
But the lack of acknowledgement of Pakistan's role in bin-Laden's apprehension and the assumption by many Americans that Islamabad was hiding the world's most wanted terrorist has boosted resentment in Islamabad that the nation is being viewed as a second-class ally or a potential enemy in the US-led war on terror.
The Pakistanis insist they did not know bin Laden was at Abbottabad until the Americans swooped and killed him. They admit the fact that bin Laden lived for some time under the noses of Pakistan's military was a monumental intelligence failure.
"But please remember that the first lead to the CIA was given by ISI operators," the Pakistani officer says.
"Somehow the CIA decided to go it alone, seeing it was such a big catch. It is unclear whether the operation was intended to take the full credit for the Americans or to discredit Pakistan."
It is likely that once the US confirmed bin Laden was the prize, they were not prepared to risk anything going wrong, and those in direct control of the operation also considered the possibility of a costly ambush of the cream of their special forces too big a risk.
Pakistan is a crucial ally to the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, providing a vital road route for the vast military supplies the coalition forces need and mounting joint offensives with the coalition against the insurgents. But it is also regularly accused of supporting insurgents and orchestrating attacks in Afghanistan -- which it strenuously denies.
In the lead-up to the attack on bin Laden, the Pakistanis say that late last year they noticed an increase in US activity inside their country that culminated in the shooting of two local men by Raymond Davis in January.
The CIA contractor was sitting in his car at a busy intersection in Lahore and told police the men pulled alongside him on a motorcycle. One brandished a pistol, Davis said.
The American shot the men through a closed window.
When one man ran for his life Davis got out of his car and shot him in the back.
It has been claimed he fired more shots at the men as they lay on the ground and used his phone to photograph them. Davis also made a phone call seeking help but a vehicle full of Americans racing towards him drove the wrong way down a busy street and fatally injured a motorcyclist. The would-be rescuers fled to the US consulate and were flown out of the country along with their Pakistani driver and his family.
Pakistani officials say they are convinced Davis killed the men to shut them up. They believe his "cover" in Pakistan was as a low-level spy gathering information about insurgent groups and the two men he killed were probably sources of information who may have been looking for money from him. The ISI believes Davis was part of a US network trying to find bin Laden or possibly monitoring local nuclear facilities.
After huge pressure from the US government and a payment of at least $1 million to the families of the men he killed, Davis was sent home where he was arrested for assault in Colorado after allegedly belting a motorist during a row over a parking space.
In May came the US raid that killed bin Laden and saw Pakistan's military held up to ridicule at home because it had not prevented it.
In an atmosphere of anger and confusion left by those episodes, and while terrorist bomb blasts continued in Pakistan's cities, came the latest tragedy.
In November, US aircraft made a series of attacks on two Pakistani military posts near the border, killing 24 soldiers and wounding 15.
US investigators said later US and Afghan special forces preparing to raid a nearby village had been fired on and called in air support. Pakistani commanders called the coalition HQ and said their troops were being attacked by aircraft.
The attacks stopped, leaving several Pakistanis wounded.
A US liaison officer then asked the Pakistanis if they had troops in the area but fed incorrect information into his laptop and gave the wrong location. It was 14km out and the Pakistanis said, correctly, they had no troops in that area.
Then the helicopters and fixed wing aircraft returned and, the commander of the 150,000-strong Pakistani Army corps that guards the border says, they "plastered" the two Pakistani posts, killing 24 soldiers.
"The first incident could have been a mistake but not the second," says Lieutenant General Khalid Rabbani.
Rabbani says with their sophisticated night vision equipment, the US forces would have been able to see clearly that the posts were occupied by men in uniform and not insurgents.
"That is why we conclude it was an intentional punishing of the posts for reasons best known to our American friends."
US liaison officers working along the border with the Pakistani army were not informed US special forces would be in the area and so the Pakistanis were not told. It is likely trust had reached such a low ebb that the US thought the Pakistanis might tip off the insurgents.
Because they did not know friendly troops were around, the Pakistani soldiers in the posts continued with their practice of firing short bursts of "speculative fire" into the surrounding landscape. Rabbani says that was common to cover gaps in the defence.
The Australian army does not use speculative fire because of concerns it might hit unintended targets.
Rabbani concedes the Americans may have thought that fire was directed at them but he says that would not have happened if the US forces had liaised with the Pakistanis.
"If there was an American patrol in that area, why didn't they co-ordinate. The rules of the business are very clear. The moment we are on foot and we move out we inform them."
IN September last year, Admiral Mullen said publicly what officials had often claimed privately -- that the Haqqani network, the aggressive Taliban affiliate operating in the east of Afghanistan, was a virtual arm of Pakistan's main intelligence agency.
That claim was strongly denied by Pakistan and the US later backed away from it. Other coalition officials say they believed Mullen overstated the situation.
Rabbani says the claim was ridiculous. "I must say that a person as senior as Admiral Mullen on retirement went wonky.
"Why did he not say that while he was sitting here?" He gestures around his office.
Rabbani says Mullen met local commanders "umpteen times" but did not make that claim to them.
"On retirement, while he's frustrated about what's been done in Afghanistan, he would now like to shift the blame on others," Rabbani says.
The general says Pakistan's failure to find bin Laden was a serious intelligence breakdown but that fell far short of the al-Qa'ida leader being deliberately hidden with official sanction.
"He never used any communications equipment, kept movements to a minimum in a closed environment and never saw the sky for months or years," Rabbani says.
He makes a comparison with the September 11 bombers living in the US and training there for the attacks. "If that could happen in the US, then how could this not have happened here?"
But Pakistani officials do concede that small numbers of former officers, aligned to the insurgents decades ago when these groups were Western allies fighting the Russians, might still be helping them unofficially.
The officers describe how thousands of their security personnel have been killed and wounded over the past decade fighting terrorists. Attacks on mosques have killed many soldiers at prayer along with their wives and children. Those killed include 78 ISI members.
"These people are monsters. Why would we support them?" says an ISI official.
The officers see their country as a frontline state in the war on terror and are dismayed that the West is not more appreciative of what they've achieved and the price Pakistan has paid in lives.
They're aware of the strong belief in the US that Pakistan was hiding bin Laden and they sense a view among many Americans that when the 24 Pakistani troops were killed, the Pakistanis deserved it.
The officers deeply resent Western claims that they support the insurgency. Over the past decade, the army, frontier corps and police have lost well over 4000 men killed and thousands more wounded.
"If we have such great and strong connections with these people, then why are so many of us being killed?" says the ISI officer. "And we would hardly be attacking the militants as vigorously as we have if we were supporting them."
In Pakistan's tribal areas since 2007, the army says it has killed 11,898 insurgents.
"This is what we've inflicted on them and still we are told we are their friends," the ISI officer says.
Pakistan has paid a huge economic and social cost. In the first 11 months of 2011, there were 1489 insurgent attacks in the Swat and FATA areas, including 39 suicide bombings. But it is now considered safe to drive through some of the fought-over areas between Peshawar and Swat without a military escort.
The officers say the Pakistan army was for a time co-ordinating attacks on insurgents on its side of the border with coalition attacks from Afghanistan in a "hammer and anvil" strategy and say they will move soon to clear out North Waziristan, where many members of the Haqqani network are living.
But they say the coalition in Afghanistan has indicated it is concentrating on clearing populated areas in the south and is not yet ready to provide the "anvil"along the border opposite North Waziristan.
The generals acknowledge that they've suffered many of their casualties while battling the Pakistan Taliban, who are mainly aggrieved tribesmen from their own mountain areas.
ALONG this 1208km stretch of border with Afghanistan, towering mountains drop thousands of metres into deep valleys. It's an area almost impossible to control.
Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, FATA, was the training ground of the mujahidin during the war against the Soviets which, with US help, was turned into an Islamic jihad against the communists.
"Once the Soviets left, the entire world forgot about this area," says Rabbani. "And unfortunately we also forgot about those areas of FATA and all that was happening there."
With no development, high unemployment, a warlike culture and ample weapons, resentment festered and an insurgency emerged among the Pashtun tribes on both sides of the arbitrary colonial border, the Durand Line, which bisects villages.
"These people kept growing in number and finally they became so omnipotent that it was a threat not only to the area but also to Pakistan," says Rabbani.
"Fighting there is a nightmare."
Soldiers serve here for 30 months at a time compared with six- to 12-month rotations for NATO forces, and fatigue and equipment wear and tear are serious issues.
In a Pakistan weary of war, there is a yearning for peace and acceptance by the world. As the security situation slowly improves, Pakistanis talk about life being better now than in the days of General Pervez Musharraf's dictatorship.
Television news leads off with a story about a bomb blast in Karachi with tragic footage of a young woman on a stretcher. Then it moves on to how Pakistan is doing in the cricket and then to an item about Lady Gaga. "We love Lady Gaga," explains a young man.
Security checkpoints are everywhere in Islamabad but many carry signs saying "Sorry for the inconvenience".
And in Islamabad's social circles, there's a bad-taste joke suggesting that after years cooped up in a house with three wives, bin Laden himself tipped off the Americans to come and get him.
As Pakistan struggles with its latest transition from military rule to democracy and greater press freedom, concern remains among many civilians that the army and its security arm continue to wield too much power.
Some Pakistanis claim the ISI was responsible for the murder in May last year of local journalist and author Syed Saleem Shahzad.
On May 22, soon after the Abbottabad raid, insurgents attacked Pakistan Naval Air Station-Mehran outside Karachi and destroyed two aircraft. Shahzad wrote a story saying naval officers had told him that the ease with which the attackers gained access to the base indicated that al-Qa'ida had infiltrated navy ranks.
Members of the feisty Pakistani media have said the agency was angry about that claim but the ISI says it did not kill him and had no reason to do so.
The Australian was told by non-ISI sources that others may have had more motive to kill Shahzad than the spy agency.
In recent weeks, Shahzad interviewed a key al-Qa'ida commander, Ilyas Kashmiri, in a distant part of the tribal areas.
Kashmiri was killed in a US drone strike two days later and investigators say it's possible the insurgents thought the journalist was tracked to the meeting or that he let slip crucial information that led NATO to Kashmiri.
That would give people other than ISI good reason to kill him, they say.
In a major offensive in 2009, the Pakistani army cleared thousands of insurgents out of the Swat Valley. Captured gunmen were jailed but the army set up deradicalisation centres where hundreds of low-level Taliban helpers, who may have cooked or kept watch for the militants, are being told by moderate religious teachers that Islam is a religion of peace and that suicide bombing is contrary to the teachings of the Koran.
At the Swat Valley centre, the mainly young men have debriefing sessions with psychiatrists and are being taught to be motor mechanics, jewellery makers, tailors and computer operators.
On weekends, they can socialise with their families.
In another centre, teenagers recruited as suicide bombers are being deradicalised by teams of psychologists. One 14-year-old's bomb vest failed to detonate and others were brought to the authorities by their families.
The border war goes both ways. The officers concede that hundreds of Afghan fighters are living on Pakistani territory and they say the rugged terrain makes it hard to stop their cross-border raids.
But members of the Pakistani Taliban, hundreds of fighters controlled by Mullah Maulana Fazlullah who escaped into Afghanistan after Pakistan's Swat Valley offensive, have carried out attacks from Afghanistan on Pakistani posts, killing dozens of police and auxiliaries.
A big issue for Australian commanders in Afghanistan is the huge proportion of the fertiliser used in the improvised bombs coming from Pakistan. The IEDs are the biggest killers of coalition and Afghan troops and civilians.
Pakistani officials say it is virtually impossible to keep track of every bag once they are sold to farmers. "They carry it on their bikes to wherever they want it. How can you stop that?"
Tracking systems are being improved with the help of Australia and other countries but insurgents are cashed up enough to buy all or part of a small farmer's fertiliser supply by paying him the equivalent of what he'd get for his crop.
A senior ISI officer says Pakistan has serious concerns about coalition strategy in Afghanistan, especially night raids on the Taliban by special forces, and he doubts that it can succeed.
"You need a dialogue. You can't keep killing people. You kill a terrorist and you make people who are innocent into terrorists," he says.
The official says the coalition underestimates their enemy. "They think they're brutes and they don't have minds. We may be uneducated but we're not butchers. There's a difference between a brutal killer and an illiterate who's a little rigid.
"In the end, you'll all go away leaving the problem to us."
Brendan Nicholson travelled through the Swat Valley and to Peshawar and was granted rare access to senior levels of Pakistan's military and intelligence services for this exclusive report.
Cookies must be enabled | The Australian
