[USATODAY] According to Al Jazeera, the report finds the government's intention in conducting the inquiry was likely aimed at "regime continuance, when the regime is desperate to distance itself from any responsibility for the national disaster that occurred on its watch." It says that the inquiry was likely "a reluctant response to an overwhelming public and parliamentary demand."The report blames "Government Implosion Syndrome" for lack of intelligence on bin Laden's nine-year residence in Pakistan and its response to the U.S. raid.
The commission says Bin Laden and his family were apparently able to stay and travel in Pakistan without detection because he had a small, but dedicated, network "that met their every need."
"They kept a very low profile and lived extremely frugally," the report says. "They never exposed themselves to public view. They had the cover of the two Pakistani Pashtun couriers cum security guards. They had minimum security. OBL successfully minimized any 'signature' of his presence. His minimal support blended easily with the surrounding community."
Al Jazeera quotes the report as saying the commission finds that "culpable negligence and incompetence at almost all levels of government can more or less be conclusively established."
The report focuses intently on the night of the raid, interviewing bin Laden's family and members of the household extensively.
In summing up its assessment of the killing of bin Laden, the commission spares few words:
The whole episode of the U.S. assassination mission of May 2, 2011 and the Pakistan government's response before, during and after appears in large part to be a story of complacency, ignorance, negligence, incompetence, irresponsibility and possibly worse at various levels inside and outside the government.
Among other findings:
Bin Laden entered Pakistan in mid-2002 after narrowly escaping capture in the battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Over nine years, he moved to various places inside the country, including South Waziristan and northern Swat Valley.
In Swat, the al-Qaeda leader reportedly met with Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, in early 2003. About a month later, KSM was captured in Rawalpindi in a joint U.S.-Pakistani operation, and bin Laden fled the area.
Bin Laden, along with two of his wives and several children and grandchildren, moved into the custom-built compound in Abbottabad, a military garrison town, in 2005 and lived there until the U.S. raid.
Bin Laden was very concerned about surveillance. The report says bin Laden wore a cowboy hat outside to avoid detection from above and considered buying and cutting down a row of poplar trees on the perimeter of the Abbottabad compound because he thought it might provide cover for observers.
The presence of a CIA support network to help track down bin Laden without the Pakistani establishment's knowledge was "a case of nothing less than a collective and sustained dereliction of duty by the political, military and intelligence leadership of the country."