À titre de correspondante, Gall s'est rendue souvent au Pakistan, terreau de l'insurrection talibane en Afghanistan. Selon les informations qu'elle y a recueillies, non seulement les renseignements pakistanais savaient où se cachait Oussama ben Laden mais ils ont également travaillé en concertation avec lui pour recruter et former des militants talibans.
Je cite dans le texte un passage du livre de Gall :
In trying to prove that the ISI knew of Bin Laden's whereabouts and protected him, I struggled for more than two years to piece together something other than circumstantial evidence and suppositions from sources with no direct knowledge. Only one man, a former ISI chief and retired general, Ziauddin Butt, told me that he thought Musharraf had arranged to hide Bin Laden in Abbottabad. But he had no proof and, under pressure, claimed in the Pakistani press that he'd been misunderstood.
Finally, on a winter evening in 2012, I got the confirmation I was looking for. According to one inside source, the ISI actually ran a special desk assigned to handle Bin Laden. It was operated independently, led by an officer who made his own decisions and did not report to a superior. He handled only one person: Bin Laden. I was sitting at an outdoor cafe when I learned this, and I remember gasping, though quietly so as not to draw attention. (Two former senior American officials later told me that the information was consistent with their own conclusions.) This was what Afghans knew, and Taliban fighters had told me, but finally someone on the inside was admitting it. The desk was wholly deniable by virtually everyone at the ISI - such is how supersecret intelligence units operate - but the top military bosses knew about it, I was told.
America's failure to fully understand and actively confront Pakistan on its support and export of terrorism is one of the primary reasons President Karzai has become so disillusioned with the United States.