US Security Expert Claims Hersh's Report on Bin Laden's Killing Plagiarism

The controversial report alleging that Washington lied about the details surrounding the 2011 killing of former al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, written by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, is plagiarism, national security expert R.J. Hillhouse said.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Hillhouse claims that she was the first to question the official US version of Bin Laden's killing, according to which Pakistan had been unaware of the raid.

"If it's fiction — as some have implied, it's plagiarism. If it's true, it's not original. The story was broken here on [the blog] The Spy Who Billed Me four years ago, in August 2011," Hillhouse posted on her website on Monday.

The London Review of Books published a report named "The Killing of Bin Laden" in which Hersh claimed, citing an anonymous "major U.S. source," that Pakistani authorities had been aware of the whereabouts of Bin Laden since 2006.

The report also said that Islamabad had collaborated with the US administration to kill Bin Laden in 2011.

On Monday, the White House said Hersh's story was inaccurate and baseless.

However, NBC News reported on Tuesday, citing US intelligence sources, that Pakistani intelligence had shared the information on Bin Laden's location with the CIA a year prior to the raid.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hersh has been repeatedly criticized for his heavy use of anonymous sourcing.