Quest to clarify Bin Ladens last days yields vexing accounts

Climbing the stairs to the second floor,Qadir passed a body outline that marked the spot where Bin Ladens 22-year-old son,Khalid,was shot dead. Then he turned to a small room with a low ceiling,an empty wardrobe and a tight cluster of bullets holes in one wall,he said. Above that,on the ceiling,was a fading splash of blood that,his Pakistani intelligence escort told him,belonged to Bin Laden.

As a former soldier,I was struck by how badly the house was defended, Qadir said in an interview. No proper security measures,nothing high-tech 8211; in fact,nothing like you would expect.

Qadirs quixotic investigation began as a personal

attempt to truth-check the competing accounts of Bin Ladens last years in Pakistan. But his work has already come under scrutiny and criticism,mostly on the grounds that his heavy reliance on Pakistani military and intelligence sources leaves him open to official manipulation.

At the least,though,the end product a novella-length report,still officially unpublished offers tantalizing possibilities about

Bin Ladens circumstances and the suspicions that drove relations between Pakistan and the United States to the brink.

For instance,Qadir claims that Bin Ladens fifth and youngest wife,Amal Ahmed al-Sadah,told Pakistani interrogators that her husband underwent a kidney transplant operation in 2002 a claim that,if proven,could help explain how the ailing Saudi militant was able to survive with a known kidney ailment,but raises questions about who was helping him.

He also heard of poisonous mistrust between Bin Ladens wives. In the cramped Abbottabad house,he was told,tensions erupted between Sadah,described as the favored wife, and Khairiah Saber,an older woman who occupied a separate floor. Sadah accused her rival of having betrayed their husband to American intelligence.

Bin Ladens youngest wife also told interrogators that her husband shaved his beard and disguised as an ailing Pashtun elder as he leapfrogged between safe houses across northwestern Pakistan,eventually regrowing it after settling in the Abbottabad house in 2005.

Despite Bin Ladens death,many of the toughest questions remain. Who helped him stay on the run? How did the CIA track him down? And,perhaps most important,did Pakistans generals know he was living a stones throw from their leading military academy?

Pakistans government says the answers will come from an official commission of inquiry,led by a Supreme Court judge,that has been working since May. Among those who have testified is Qadir,a 64-year-old former infantry commander. He embarked on a sleuthing expedition that would last eight months and has left him 10,000 out of pocket. He traveled into the tribal belt and Afghanistan to interview old tribal contacts,and into the hushed headquarters of Pakistani military intelligence agency,the ISI,in Islamabad.

Several of the conclusions that Qadir draws in his report are highly contentious,like a belief that Qaeda operatives betrayed their leader to earn Americas reward money. They wanted Bin Laden gone,and they wanted a share of the 25 million, he said. Peter Bergen,a terrorism analyst and author of a forthcoming book on Bin Ladens last years,called that a ridiculous notion.

Qadir,for his part,concedes that his conclusions are based on conjecture,and admits that his ISI briefers may have concealed crucial facts. Id be a bloody fool if I didnt see that, he said. I dont say this is the entire truth. But its the closest you will get at this point in time.