White House calls bin Laden article ‘outright falsehoods’

By

The Associated Press

AFGHANISTAN – MAY 26, 1998: (FILE PHOTO) Suspected terrorist leader Osama bin Laden addresses a news conference May 26, 1998 in Afghanistan. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Budget Committee February 11, 2003 that he had read a transcript from bin Laden or someone believed to be him, speaking about his partnership with Iraq from an Al Jazeera tape. The Arab satellite station aired a statement allegedly from Osama bin Laden. (Photo by Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The White House is dismissing as untrue an article alleging that President Obama misled the public about how the U.S. killed Osama bin Laden.

Spokesman Josh Earnest says journalist Seymour Hersh’s piece in the London Review of Books is “riddled with inaccuracies and outright falsehoods.”

Earnest noted former CIA deputy director Michael Morell’s reaction to the article — that he stopped reading because every sentence was wrong.

Hersh attributes his information to a retired general of the Pakistani intelligence service and several unidentified sources in the U.S. and Pakistan. He says bin Laden was secretly kept as a prisoner by the Pakistanis and that they helped the U.S. stage the raid on his compound.

The Obama administration says the Pakistanis didn’t know about the raid in advance.