Ex-CIA Officer Claims Osama bin Laden Escaped Tora Bora Disguised as Woman

In a startling disclosure, former CIA officer John Kiriakou revealed that Al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden evaded capture during the 2001 U.S. operation in Afghanistan's Tora Bora mountains by disguising himself as a woman, slipping across the border into Pakistan under the cover of darkness in the back of a pickup truck. Kiriakou, who served 15 years in the agency and led counterterrorism efforts in Pakistan, shared this account in an interview with ANI, attributing the escape to a critical intelligence failure: an Al-Qaeda operative posing as the translator for U.S. Central Command's commander, who deceived General Tommy Franks into granting a delay until dawn to "evacuate women and children". When dawn broke, Tora Bora was empty, forcing the U.S. to pivot operations into Pakistan proper. Bin Laden, the architect of the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, remained at large until U.S. Navy SEALs killed him in a 2011 raid on his Abbottabad compound.

Kiriakou described the early post-9/11 U.S. strategy as overly reactive, with a month-long delay before airstrikes on Al-Qaeda strongholds in Pashtun regions of southern and eastern Afghanistan, prioritising deliberate buildup over emotional haste. "We believed in October of 2001 that we had Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership cornered at Tora Bora," he recounted, only for the infiltrator's ploy to unravel the siege.

This breach highlighted vulnerabilities in U.S. military vetting, where the translator—later exposed as an Al-Qaeda asset—facilitated the militants' mass exodus. The revelation echoes long-standing suspicions around Tora Bora, a labyrinthine cave complex where U.S. forces relied on Afghan allies and local intelligence amid logistical challenges, but Kiriakou's insider perspective adds a layer of betrayal to the narrative of one of the War on Terror's most infamous near-misses.

The escape underscored the complex, transactional U.S.-Pakistan alliance under President Pervez Musharraf, whom Kiriakou bluntly called "purchased" through billions in military and economic aid. "We essentially just purchased Musharraf... he would let us do whatever we wanted to do," Kiriakou said, noting frequent high-level meetings that secured basing rights for drones in Balochistan.

However, Musharraf balanced this by placating Pakistan's military, fixated on India rather than Al-Qaeda, allowing a "dual life" of nominal counterterrorism cooperation while tolerating anti-India groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). In a 2002 Lahore raid, U.S. forces seized an Al-Qaeda training manual from LeT fighters—the first analytical link between the networks and Islamabad—yet the White House downplayed it to preserve the partnership. "The relationship is bigger than India-Pakistan. At least temporarily," Kiriakou explained, prioritising Afghan access over South Asian concerns.

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Kiriakou urged Pakistan to recognise the futility of confronting India, warning it would lose any conventional war, and advocated policy shifts toward regional stability. His comments, delivered amid ongoing U.S. reflections on the 20-plus-year Afghanistan quagmire, revive debates on intelligence lapses and geopolitical compromises that prolonged the hunt for bin Laden. As a whistleblower who exposed CIA torture in 2007—leading to his own imprisonment—Kiriakou's candour challenges official histories, reminding us that the path from Tora Bora to Abbottabad was paved with overlooked deceptions and pragmatic blind eyes.

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