My Theory of a Sting Has Proven Improbable

I’ve been entertaining the hypothesis that the President is running a sting operation to entrap the 9/11 conspirators.

My thinking was that the President created an operation that would fail in so many circumstances that Congress and the public would demand a second commission of inquiry which would gradually broaden in scope until it took in the whole of the 9/11 false-flag operation.

I was initially convinced that this would prove to be the start of intensive accountability operations that would see the cabal finally broken and brought to justice and would usher in disclosure.

But after doing as much research as one can do when an event is fresh out of the starting gate, I’ve come to doubt the likelihood of that scenario. While not being convinced that the man killed in Abbottabad is Osama bin Laden and not having changed any of my views on the role (or lack of role) of Osama in the execution of 9/11, I nevertheless have come to doubt that the President is engineering a sting operation and have decided not to pursue my original conjecture.

Having reviewed articles and video related to the Abbottabad raid, I now think that President Obama genuinely believes that American troops killed Osama bin Laden on May 2. (1)

I’ve examined accounts of the intelligence gathered before the raid, the decision-making process, the preparations for the raid, the raid itself, the Obama team and CIA Director Panetta witnessing the raid, the manner in which errors in describing the raid occurred, and the DNA testing process. The cumulative evidence points to the conclusion that the President and CIA Director Leon Panetta are genuine in their beliefs as expressed in most news stories.

Occam’s Razor figured largely here as well. To account for all the variables that would be needed to establish my theory of a sting was much more complicated than the theory that presents itself from a review of the facts.

A piece of evidence that weighed heavily with me was PBS’s interview with CIA Director Leon Panetta. I’ve watched this video a number of times. There is nothing in Panetta’s words or demeanor that suggests that he is being insincere in the view he puts forward.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

DNA Evidence

One of my objections to the scenario presented by the Administration was that I didn’t think that DNA identification could be made that quickly. But an article by Time.com suggests that much of the DNA matching had been done prior to the attack using samples from Osama’s relatives and the rest was done using a speedy process only recently made available. Time says:

That’s where his brothers and sisters come in. Bits of a person’s unique genetic fingerprint are shared with his or her siblings and parents — since the latter are the ones who give you your DNA to begin with — so DNA swabs collected from the raid in Pakistan would have been matched with reference samples from bin Laden’s siblings. A close match identifies bin Laden with an exceedingly high probability of accuracy.

Indeed, taken together, the proof was strong enough to prompt President Obama to deliver a dramatic address to the nation on Sunday night declaring that the U.S. had successfully killed the terrorist mastermind.

The identification was also confirmed with terrific speed. As Kit Eaton at Fast Company reported:

Typical lab-based DNA matching tests like this can take up to 14 days; they’re painstaking and need to be repeated several times to ensure the sample’s not contaminated from any other DNA sources. But that’s not necessarily the only way to do these tests: late in 2010, a University of Arizona team presented research on a machine that can do the analysis in just two hours in a largely automated way.

It’s possible that knowing they were engaged on a mission to capture bin Laden, U.S. forces arranged for access to a machine like this to be on quick alert — probably for flying blood, cheek cells, and other samples taken from the body to the lab for expedited analysis.

Eaton also pointed out that DNA matching isn’t an exact science and that sibling matching is even less exact: “It all comes down to a probability, with a statement like, ‘There’s a 1 in 1 quadrillion chance this isn’t the same person in both DNA samples.’ In other words: conspiracy theorists still have something to talk about.” (3)

I find this evidence to be probable and persuasive.

Not Convinced It Was Osama

I personally still do not believe that Osama bin Laden was in the compound because I accept the view, most strongly put forward by Benazir Bhutto in a 2007 interview, that Osama was killed in late 2001/early 2002. I don’t think Osama could have survived ten years when he was already in renal failure and on kidney dialysis in 2001. I don’t accept that Osama was the mastermind of 9/11 either.

Matthew Ward has stated that Osama was not killed on May 2, 2011. Suzy Ward relayed this message from Matthew:

“Matthew said he’ll speak about this in his next message, but to answer your question now: No, the US did not kill Osama bin Laden May 2 in Pakistan — or any day, anywhere!” (2)

I hope we’ll hear details from Matthew about who it may have been, what actually happened with the body, etc.

In this video, Alex Jones asserts that the whole scenario is a “wag the dog” charade. That theory, I think, goes too far in the opposite direction and I don’t believe it either.

After examining all the evidence and after reflection, I’ve concluded that my own scenario is improbable and not supported.

I regret having introduced readers to a theory that has in the end not proven fruitful.