WASHINGTON: The White House rejected on Monday as “baseless” a report, which claimed that the official US version of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound was a cover up.

“There are too many inaccuracies and baseless assertions in this piece to fact-check each one,” White House National Security spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.

President Barack Obama announced on May 2, 2011, that SEALs had killed the Al Qaeda leader the same night in a helicopter raid. The elite commandos flew in under cover of darkness from Afghanistan as the administration decided not to consult or inform Pakistan about the operation.

Also read: Ex-intelligence man told US about Osama’s hideout: author

But the piece that journalist Seymour Hersh wrote is raising new questions. It showed that “everything you know about Osama bin Laden’s killing is wrong,” observed the Slate magazine.

The White House rejected Mr Hersh’s assertion that the CIA and other US agencies collaborated with the Pakistani military to kill bin Laden.

“As we said at the time, knowledge of this operation was confined to a very small circle of senior US officials. The President decided early on not to inform any other government, including the Pakistani government, which was not notified until after the raid had occurred,” Mr Price said.

“We had been and continue to be partners with Pakistan in our joint effort to destroy Al Qaeda, but this was a US operation through and through.”

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play