Osama Bin Laden Fled Disguised As Woman After US Launched Op Post 9/11 Attacks: Ex-CIA Officer

Last Updated:October 25, 2025, 11:08 IST

John Kiriakou revealed Osama bin Laden escaped Tora Bora disguised as a woman, aided by an Al-Qaeda infiltrator. US later uncovered Lashkar-e-Taiba links to Al-Qaeda in Lahore.

File photo of Osama Bin Laden. (Image: AP)

Former CIA officer John Kiriakou shared some key details about the United States’ anti-terror operation in Afghanistan against Al-Qaeda following the 9/11 attacks, revealing that its most wanted terrorist, Osama bin Laden, escaped from one of the terror sites disguised as a woman.

Speaking exclusively to ANI, the ex-CIA officer said that Al-Qaeda founder Laden escaped from the Tora Bora mountains dressed as a woman to enter Pakistan in a pickup truck.

Having served 15 years in the CIA and leading its counterterrorism operations in Pakistan, Kiriakou disclosed that a translator working for the US military at the time was, in fact, an Al-Qaeda operative.

“First, the United States was reactive at the time rather than proactive. You remember, we waited for more than a month before we started bombing Afghanistan. We were trying to be deliberate. We were trying to not let emotion cloud our judgment. And we waited a month until we had proper buildup in the region. And then we began attacking known Al-Qaeda sites. Again, mostly in the Pashto areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. We believed in October of 2001 that we had Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda leadership cornered at Tora Bora," he said.

“We did not know that the translator for the commander of Central Command was actually an al-Qaeda operative who had infiltrated the US military. And so we knew we had bin Laden cornered," he added.

He revealed that the translator persuaded General Tommy Franks to delay the assault until dawn, claiming women and children needed to be evacuated.

“We told him to come down the mountain. And he said through the translator, can you just give us until dawn? We want to evacuate the women and children and then we’ll come down and give up. The translator convinced General Franks to approve this idea. What ended up happening was bin Laden dressed as a woman and he escaped under the cover of darkness in the back of a pickup truck into Pakistan," he further said.

Kiriakou added that when US forces advanced at dawn, there was no one in Tora Bora to give up," adding, “They had all escaped. And so we had to move the fight to Pakistan proper."

He went on to say that Washington had “essentially purchased Musharraf" to gain Pakistan’s cooperation. “We gave millions and millions and millions of dollars in aid, whether it was military aid or economic development aid. And we would meet with Musharraf regularly, several times a week. And essentially, he would let us do whatever we wanted to do. Yes. But Musharraf also had his own people that he needed to deal with," he remarked, adding that Pakistan’s military “didn’t care about Al-Qaeda; they cared about India."

Kiriakou also revealed that in 2002, a CIA raid on a Lashkar-e-Taiba safe house in Lahore uncovered the first analytical link between the group and Al-Qaeda — a finding the White House downplayed to preserve its strategic ties with Pakistan.

News world Osama Bin Laden Fled Disguised As Woman After US Launched Op Post 9/11 Attacks: Ex-CIA Officer

Read More