Will Congress Cut $1.3 Billion In Aid To Pakistan?
LOS ANGELES (CBS) — Washington political representatives ask how the Pakistanis couldn't have known Osama Bin Laden was living in their midst just 35 miles from Islamabad, and a half mile from a Pakistani military academy that was the equivalent of West Point.
In an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, Director Leon Panetta, joined the chorus of skeptics about the Pakistani claim that they never knew Osama Bin Laden was living in their country. When Couric asked him if he thought Pakistani's had some idea of what was coming on, Panetta laughed.
"Well that's why there are questions here that I think the best people to respond to those questions are the Pakistanis," he said.
Later, Panetta was quoted as telling Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other lawmakers that either the Pakistani government was secretly involved in Bin Laden or it was incompetence.
Feinstein says Congress might consider cutting nearly $1.3-billion in aid to Pakistan.
"I think we have to know whether they knew, the Pakistanis knew. If they didn't know, why didn't they know."
The growing controversy is being fanned by front page newspaper headlines and by new revelations that Bin Laden had lived in the high profile compound for as long as six years.
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