Christiane Amanpour ABC
Is it possible that the dots were connected more than two years ago?
Speculation as to bin Laden’s whereabouts ran rampant over the past decade. We wanted to envision a frail and gray Osama holed up in a cave in the Hindu Kush, when in reality he was in a suburban home in Pakistan. And it turns out that more than two years ago, a respected international journalist, citing a U.S. intelligence official, knew this precise fact.
Christiane Amanpour, then the chief international correspondent for CNN, brought up the intel on Real Time with Bill Maher back in October 2008.
“This woman who is in American intelligence thinks that he’s in a villa – a nice comfortable villa in Pakistan,” she lets out.
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However, her inside scoop is overshadowed by a joke from Maher, who cuts her off to speculate on his own location: “In Cabo?” he asks. But that’s the one and only mention of her knowledge of the situation, with the free-form, often rambunctious show dropping bin Laden like yesterday’s news to talk about the always chatter-worthy Sarah Palin. Amanpour seems confident, though, that he’s not in a cave when questioned by fellow guests Gary Shandling and Alec Baldwin.
Was it obvious that a terrorist mastermind wouldn’t settle for the life of a caveman?
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