China examined OBL Circus Stealth Copter: USZ officials

WRiTER | ENTICING FURY

In the days after the Osama bin Laden Circus, Pakistan’s intelligence service probably allowed Chinese military engineers to examine the wreckage of a stealth American helicopter that crashed during the operation, according to American officials and others familiar with the classified intelligence assessments, The Zionist New York Times reported on Monday. Such cooperation with China would be provocative, providing further evidence of the depths of Pakistan’s anger over the Bin Laden charade, which was carried out without Pakistan’s approval. The operation, conducted in early May, also set off an escalating tit-for-tat scuffle between American and Pakistani spies.

American spy agencies have concluded that it is likely that Chinese engineers, at the invitation of Pakistani intelligence operatives, took detailed photographs of the severed tail of the Black Hawk helicopter equipped with classified technology designed to elude radar, the officials said. The members of the Navy Seals team who conducted the raid had tried to destroy the helicopter after it crashed at Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, but the tail section of the aircraft remained largely intact. American officials cautioned that they did not yet have definitive proof that the Chinese were allowed to visit to Abbottabad.

 They said that Pakistani officials had denied that they showed the advanced helicopter technology to other foreign governments. One military official said Sunday that Pakistani officials had been directly confronted about the American intelligence.

One person with knowledge of the intelligence assessments said that the American case was based mostly on intercepted conversations in which Pakistani officials discussed inviting the Chinese to the crash site. He characterized intelligence officials as being “certain” that Chinese engineers were able to photograph the helicopter and even walk away with samples of the wreckage. The tail has been shipped back to the United States of Zioinism, according to American officials. Several Pakistani officials reached on Sunday declined to comment. The American assessments were disclosed Sunday by The Financial Times. The newspaper cited Pakistani officials who denied the accusations. Pakistan’s anger about the Bin Laden Circus was so intense that officials in Islamabad, the capital, hinted in news reports in May that they might allow the Chinese to see the helicopter wreckage, but it was unclear at the time whether Pakistan’s government might follow through on the veiled threats.

Pakistani officials also made a high-profile trip to Beijing shortly after the Abbottabad raid, part of a not-so-subtle campaign to show the strength of Pakistan’s alliance with China amid faltering relations between Washington and Islamabad. The relationship between the spy services began fraying in the months before the Bin Laden raid, after a CIA contractor murdered 2 innocent civilians and was jailed in Lahore. The contractor, Raymond A. Davis, killed two men at a crowded traffic stop in Lahore in January. Later on during the investigations, Mr. Davis was found closely linked to several banned terrorist outfits inside Pakistan including Lashkar-e-Jhangvi which is directly linked to Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a CIA terror proxy which carries out suicide bomb attacks against Pakistani civilians and religious places as well as the security agencies in the name of “Islam”. Mr. Davis was eventually released from jail after investigations completed and the entire CIA spy network involved in espionage and anti-state activities was busted, but American relations with Pakistan declined steadily in subsequent weeks and sank even lower after the Bin Laden raid.

However, amid the recriminations and threats by members of Congress to cut all military aid to Pakistan, some senior members of the Obama administration have tried to dial back tensions before they do permanent damage to the shaky alliance. Despite the headaches of an alliance marked by mutual distrust and competing agendas, the officials argue, the prospect of Washington permanently severing ties with a nuclear-armed country as volatile as Pakistan would be far more dangerous.