How did Osama Bin Laden escape US clutches in Afghanistan? Ex-CIA officer reveals 9/11 mastermind's cunning plot

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou in a recent interview recounted Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden's daring escape from the clutches of the US, dressed as a woman.

The former chief of counterterrorism operations was stationed in Pakistan after the devastating 9/11 attacks in the US, masterminded by Bin Laden, whom Washington branded its most-wanted terrorist.

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Kiriakou explained that the US followed Bin Laden's movements all the way to Afghanistan, where the military took a month's time to get a footing; a "proper buildup" in the region, before bombing it to draw out the nefarious terrorist.

"Then we began attacking known Al Qaeda sites. Again, mostly in the Pashto areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. We believed in October of 2001 that we had Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership cornered at Tora Bora,” Kiriakou told ANI.

However, Bin Laden made good on his escape after using the US military's translator—an insider from Al Qaeda—to convince Central Command to let women and children be evacuated before forcing Bin Laden out.

"The translator convinced General Franks to approve this idea. What ended up happening was bin Laden dressed as a woman and he escaped under the cover of darkness in the back of a pickup truck into Pakistan,” he said about the Al Qaeda terrorists' ingenious escape to Pakistan.

By May 2011, the US was tracked down Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad in northern Pakistan. He was killed soon after by United States Special Forces during a raid on his safe house.

When asked about Pakistani opposition to the killing, Kiriakou pointed out that Pervez Musharraf (then the President) had already handed over full control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons to the US at the time, in return for "millions and millions and millions of dollars in aid".

This kept the military happy, and let Pakistan "continue this dual life of pretending to cooperate with the Americans on counterterrorism while committing terror against India".

World