NY Times:
The Central Intelligence Agency’s top clandestine officer in Islamabad was pulled from the country on Thursday amid an escalating war of recriminations between American and Pakistani spies, with some American officials convinced that the officer’s cover was deliberately blown by Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.
The C.I.A. officer hastily left Pakistan on the same day that an Obama administration review of the Afghanistan war concluded that the war could not be won without greater cooperation from Islamabad in rooting out militants in Pakistan’s western mountains.
On Thursday and Friday, the United States appeared to make good on promises to expand its own efforts to attack the militants, with drone strikes hitting Khyber agency in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. Most drone strikes this year have targeted North Waziristan, and attacks on Khyber in recent years have been rare. Pakistani government officials said at least 26 militants were killed in the most recent attacks.
The outing of the C.I.A. station chief is tied to the spy agency’s campaign of drone strikes, which are very unpopular in Pakistan, although the government has given its tacit approval for them.
American officials said that the C.I.A. station chief had received a number of death threats after he was named publicly in a legal complaint sent to Pakistani police this week by the family of victims of an earlier drone strike.
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It seems clear that whatever we are paying these guys it is too much. Pakistan is clearly not much beyond a grudging ally at best. The ISI is making a real mistake going to war with the CIA.
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