I contacted a journalist who specializes in that part of the world, but he didn't have anything useful to add. I'm surprised, because the admission in that story is quite definitive: Bin Laden was an intelligence source for the ISI.

Aren't you a bit surprised by Raman's response, which rather casually defines "handling officer"? Isn't the real story in his story buried? The revelation about OBL doesn't appear until the sixth paragraph. Seems odd, given it is the headline news.

If the story is a plant, what could be its purpose? It seems to connect both Bhutto and Musharraf to OBL. And we know both are allies of the US.

I'm just trying to understand why that detail appears in that story, which is otherwise largely about the suicide bombing that almost killed Bhutto. The headline seems to emphasize a detail that is relatively unimportant, the way it is written up.

I wonder if it is a veiled threat to Bush? (I know: Sounds like an overactive imagination on my part...)