Bin Laden health rumors is John Kiriakou’s answer to the claim that Osama bin Laden had died well before the account the public was given of his death.
The claim rejected
Kiriakou’s verdict on the proposition is one word: nonsense.[1]
He explains why it had currency, and where the raw material came from. At the CIA, he says, officers received reports all the time that bin Laden had kidney failure, that he was on dialysis inside a cave, that he had some kind of spinal disorder. Medical rumours of this sort were constantly being reported back to them, and none of them ended up being true.[1]
What he says the record showed
Bin Laden, in Kiriakou’s account, was in perfectly fine health apart from some arthritis and an ongoing hip problem — and healthy enough to wage war against the United States until the day he died.[1][2]
The pattern of unconfirmed medical reporting is of a piece with the cave myth, where Kiriakou similarly argues that the popular picture of al-Qaeda’s leadership bore no relation to what the agency actually knew about where and how they lived.
The burial
Asked about the related disputes over the sea burial and the photographs, Kiriakou was less categorical. He said he does not know what to believe on the details, that he thinks bin Laden probably was buried at sea in the way described, and that some details may well be wrong, because the White House story changes constantly every time the subject comes up.[3] He sees no conspiracy in it — rather a set of people talking out of school and pretending to know details they do not actually know, which he offers as the explanation for why the story keeps changing.[3] His own position is that bin Laden really was killed in what he recalls as May 2011, really was buried at sea, and that he is not sure the details are that important.[3][4]