Pakistan OKs CIA Search of bin Laden Compound

The Pakistani government has agreed to let the CIA to search the compound where Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden. The agreement will allow the CIA to send a forensics team to use sophisticated equipment to probe for materials hidden in walls or buried, The Washington Post reported.

A CIA team could be at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, within days. A U.S. official told the Post that the “assault team was there for only 40 minutes,” and the goal is to return to the site “to do another, more thorough, look.”

CIA Deputy Director Michael J. Morell negotiated the deal with Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of Pakistan’s main intelligence service. The CIA also secured agreement to examine materials that Pakistan’s security forces recovered from the compound, the Post reported.

Pakistan has allowed the CIA to question bin Laden’s three wives taken into custody by Pakistan after the raid. Officials told the Post that none has been cooperative or provided meaningful intelligence.