Pakistan request CIA data it is unlikely to get
Image via WikipediaPakistan’s chief spy agency has demanded an accounting by the Central Intelligence Agency of all its contractors working in Pakistan, a fallout from the arrest last month of an American involved in surveillance of militant groups, a senior Pakistani intelligence official said Friday.I would be more likely to trust Pakistan with this information if the government was aggressively pursuing the Taliban along the border with Afghanistan and also was pursuing the Islamic terrorist networks within the country.
Angered that the American, Raymond A. Davis, worked as a contractor in Pakistan on covert C.I.A. operations without the knowledge of the Pakistanis, the spy agency estimated that there were “scores” more such contractors “working behind our backs,” said the official, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about a delicate matter between the two countries.
In a slight softening of the Pakistani stance since Mr. Davis’s arrest, the official said that the American and Pakistani intelligence agencies needed to continue cooperation, and that Pakistan was prepared to put the episode in the past if the C.I.A. stopped treating its Pakistani counterparts as inferior.
“Treat us as allies, not as satellites,” said the official of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI. “Respect, equality and trust are needed.”
George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, said the American spy agency’s ties to the ISI “have been strong over the years, and when there are issues to sort out, we work through them.”
“That’s the sign of a healthy partnership,” Mr. Little said.
The arrest and detention of Mr. Davis, 36, after he shot and killed two motorcyclists in the city of Lahore, soured already testy relations between two governments that are supposed to have a common front in the fight against terrorism.
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Some senior Pakistani intelligence officers were unwilling to have Mr. Davis released under almost any circumstances, said the official with knowledge of the split in the intelligence community.
He said others wanted to use the Davis case as a bargaining chip to get the withdrawal of a civil lawsuit filed in Brooklyn last year that implicates the ISI chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, in the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India.
The demand for the C.I.A. to acknowledge the number of contractors in Pakistan was driven by the suspicion that the American spy service had slipped many such secret operatives into Pakistan in the past six months, the senior ISI official said.
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Right now, it would not surprise me if some within the ISI would take the information and use it as a target list or turn it over to our enemies for that purpose. It is really hard to see why Pakistan is going to this extreme over two guys who picked the wrong man to attempt to rob. It is possible they knew of his CIA connections and were attempting to capture him.
There are just too many reasons not to give Pakistan the requested information at this point.
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