The US has dismissed reports that a former Pakistani intelligence officer provided information about the hideout of Osama Bin Laden to the CIA. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told media that it was years of painstaking effort of the American intelligence community and a unilateral operation that traced and killed bin Laden in 2011.
According to official White House account, Laden was shot dead by US commandos at his hideout in Abbottabad that took even the Pakistanis by surprise.
Several unofficial accounts appearing in the last few days have challenged that version. An editors’s note issued by a news channel had said that according to the original version of the story, a Pakistani asset told the US where bin Laden was hiding.