The tell

During his discussion with Scott Pelley for CBS 60 Minutes, aired last night, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta went through a short list of reasons as to why he believed that "someone" must have known the identity of the occupant in the Abbottabad compound; while he didn't elaborate it was clear that he meant someone in authority in Pakistan's military.

The problem with the list is that it could just as well have pointed to the occupant being a known major dealer in illicit drugs: the high walls, the Pakistani military helicopter(s) that U.S. intell had observed flying over the compound, and so on. This was a point one of John Batchelor's guests mentioned soon after the Abbottabad raid. Even the expensive SUVs seen routinely leaving and entering the compound could have belonged to a honcho in the drug trade, which is a big part of Pakistan's unofficial foreign exchange. That would also explain why folks who lived nearby weren't nosy neighbors.

However, at the end of the discussion Panetta told Pelley that there was one other thing: inspection of the compound after the U.S. raid turned up that there was no alternate or secret escape route from there.

That was the tell. That was how President Obama knew for certain he'd been right not to alert Pakistan's government to the planned raid. Only if bin Laden had expected to be warned of any impending raid would he have lived for years in the compound without installing an exit other than the front gate.

Cell phone links bin Laden courier with militant Pakistani group that has close ties with ISI and Pak military

"Heeeere lizard lizard lizard"

"It is as if the Pakistani powers that be have had, ever since Al Qaeda's retreat from Afghanistan and their withdrawal into Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, a precise idea of where the chiefs of Al Qaeda could be found. It is as if Pakistan's formidable intelligence service, the ISI, had not only localized but kept these public enemies of the U.S. -- and theoretically of Pakistan -- under observation, handy for periodic culling.

It is as if these people were bargaining chips, with the Pakistanis drawing from their reserves of terrorists and cashing them in one by one, depending on the needs of their relationship with the great American 'friend.'

Optimists will be delighted to learn that there is a country where people know a little about the hiding places of Osama bin Laden's lieutenants, as well as about Bin Laden himself, perhaps." -- Bernard-Henri Lévy, 2005

“The question of ISI and Pakistani Army complicity in Bin Laden’s hide-out now hangs like a dark cloud over the entire relationship” between Pakistan and the United States." -- Bruce Riedel, 2011

Seized Phone Offers Clues to Bin Laden’s Pakistani Links

By Carlotta Gall, Pir Zubair Shah and Eric Schmitt
June 23, 2011 - 11:00 PM EDT
The New York Times

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The cellphone of Osama bin Laden’s trusted courier, which was recovered in the raid that killed both men in Pakistan last month, contained contacts to a militant group that is a longtime asset of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, senior American officials who have been briefed on the findings say.

The discovery indicates that Bin Laden used the group, Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, as part of his support network inside the country, the officials and others said. But it also raised tantalizing questions about whether the group and others like it helped shelter and support Bin Laden on behalf of Pakistan’s spy agency, given that it had mentored Harakat and allowed it to operate in Pakistan for at least 20 years, the officials and analysts said.

In tracing the calls on the cellphone, American analysts have determined that Harakat commanders had called Pakistani intelligence officials, the senior American officials said. One said they had met. The officials added that the contacts were not necessarily about Bin Laden and his protection and that there was no “smoking gun” showing that Pakistan’s spy agency had protected Bin Laden.

But the cellphone numbers provide one of the most intriguing leads yet in the hunt for the answer to an urgent and vexing question for Washington: How was it that Bin Laden was able to live comfortably for years in Abbottabad, a town dominated by the Pakistani military and only a three-hour drive from Islamabad, the capital?

“It’s a serious lead,” said one American official, who has been briefed in broad terms on the cellphone analysis. “It’s an avenue we’re investigating.”
[...]
Harakat “is one of the oldest and closest allies of Al Qaeda, and they are very, very close to the ISI,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer and the author of “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of the Global Jihad.”

“The question of ISI and Pakistani Army complicity in Bin Laden’s hide-out now hangs like a dark cloud over the entire relationship” between Pakistan and the United States, Mr. Riedel added.

Indeed, suspicions abound that the ISI or parts of it sought to hide Bin Laden, perhaps to keep him as an eventual bargaining chip, or to ensure that billions of dollars in American military aid would flow to Pakistan as long as Bin Laden was alive.

Both the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Representative Mike Rogers, Republican of Michigan, and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, said this month that they believed that some members of the ISI or the Pakistani Army, either retired or on active duty, were involved in harboring Bin Laden.

Bin Laden himself had a long history with the ISI, dating to the mujahedeen insurgency that the Americans and Pakistanis supported against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Two former militant commanders and one senior fighter who have received support from the ISI for years said they were convinced that the ISI played a part in sheltering Bin Laden. Because of their covert existence, they spoke on the condition that their names not be used.

One of the commanders belonged to Harakat. The other said he had fought as a guerrilla and trained others for 15 years while on the payroll of the Pakistani military, until he quit a few years ago. He said that he had met Bin Laden twice.
[...]
He and the other commander, who spent 10 years with Harakat, offered no proof of their belief that Bin Laden was under Pakistani military protection. But their views were informed by their years of work with the ISI and their knowledge of how the spy agency routinely handled militant leaders it considered assets — placing them under protective custody in cities, often close to military installations.

The treatment amounts to a kind of house arrest, to ensure both the security of the asset and his low profile to avoid embarrassment to his protectors.
[...]

Yes. That is how Pakistan's military was able to magically locate members of al Qaeda when they found it expedient.

There is much more to the Times report than I've quoted here, so I hope you'll read the entire piece at the Times site.

Pakistan's ISI arrests Pakistani informants who helped CIA gather intell for US raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad (UPDATED 3X)

UPDATE 6:05 AM EDT
According to Pakistan's The News, Inter Services Public Relations is denying that anyone was arrested:

RAWALPINDI: The Pakistan Army has rejected claims in the US media that the country's top intelligence agency ISI arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. A statement released by the ISPR read that no arrests were made and no major was being investigated in reference to the Abbottabad raid.

I am not going to sit here for the rest of the morning and add more updates on denials and corrections to denials, so this is the last update.

UPDATE 5:00 AM EDT
The number of those arrested has gone up from the number cited in the NYT report, which broke the story (see below):

Pakistan Arrests 30 Civilians in Probe of U.S. Raid That Killed Bin Laden
By Haris Anwar - Jun 15, 2011 4:14 AM EDT

Pakistan arrested 30 to 40 civilians as it investigates the U.S. commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden last month, an army spokesman said, denying a report that an army major was among those detained.

Some of those arrested have already been released, Brigadier Azmat Ali, director of public relations at the army’s media arm in Rawalpindi, said in a phone interview.

A report in the New York Times that an army officer is being held is “totally wrong,” Ali said. “I can say with authority that all arrests were non-military.”

Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested five Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that killed bin Laden on May 2, the Times reported today, citing American officials it didn’t name.

Those arrested include a Pakistani army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, the report said.

UPDATE 1:54 AM EDT
From Reuters about 50 minutes ago: "Asked about the Times report [see below], a CIA spokeswoman neither confirmed nor denied it and said she had no further comment."
*********

Pakistan Arrests C.I.A. Informants in Bin Laden Raid

By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: June 14, 2011 [published online at approx. 11 PM EDT]
The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Pakistan’s top military spy agency [ISI] has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.

Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan.
[...]
The fate of the C.I.A. informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, but American officials said that the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.
[...]

The rest of the Times report doesn't throw more light on the situation so here I'll switch to the Associated Press, which unearthed another factoid connected with the situation:

AP sources: Pakistan nabs CIA informants

By KATHY GANNON [reporting from Islamabad]
[Published approx. midnight EDT]
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pakistan's intelligence service has arrested the owner of a safe house rented to the CIA to observe Osama bin Laden's compound before the U.S. raid that killed the al-Qaida leader, as well as a "handful" of other Pakistanis, a U.S. official said late Tuesday.

In Pakistan, a Western official confirmed a New York Times report [see above] that five of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the CIA before the May 2 raid were arrested by Pakistan's top military spy agency.

The officials spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.[...]