Monday, May 9, 2011

481 Leak of C.I.A. Officer Name Is Sign of Rift With Pakistan By JANE PERLEZ ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -


May 9, 2011

For the second time in five months, the Pakistani authorities have angered the Central Intelligence Agency by tipping the Pakistani news media to the identity of the C.I.A. station chief in Islamabad, a deliberate effort to complicate the work of the American spy agency in the aftermath of the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, American officials said.


The leak demonstrated the tilt toward a near adversarial relationship between the C.I.A. and the Pakistani spy agency, the Inter Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, since the Bin Laden raid. It appeared to be intended to show the leverage the Pakistanis retain over American interests in the country, both sides said.
In an address before Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Yousaf Gilani made clear that Pakistani officials at the highest levels accepted little responsibility for the fact that Bin Laden was able to hide in their country for years.
Instead, he obliquely criticized the United States as having driven Bin Laden into Pakistan, condemned its violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and called the Qaeda leader’s presence in Pakistan an intelligence failure of the “whole world.”
He said it was “disingenuous” for anyone to imply that the ISI or the army was “in cahoots” with Bin Laden, something American officials suspect but say they have no proof of.
The prime minister’s statements, along with the publication of the name of the C.I.A. station chief, signaled the depths of the recriminations and potential for retaliation on both sides as American officials demand greater transparency and cooperation from Pakistan, which has not been forthcoming.
The Pakistani spy agency gave the name of the station chief to The Nation, a conservative daily newspaper with a small circulation that is supportive of the ISI, American and Pakistani officials said. The ISI commonly plants stories in the Pakistani media and is known to keep some journalists on its payroll.
The name that appeared in print was misspelled but close enough to send a clear signal, the officials said. Similarly, last December, the cover of the station chief at the time was deliberately revealed by the ISI, again by a close approximation of the name, American officials said. As a result, he was forced to leave the country.
In that case, the leak appeared in at least one Pakistani newspaper, including The News, a widely circulated English language paper. Subsequently, a Pakistani lawyer representing a family of victims of an American drone strike against militants in the tribal region included the name in a legal complaint sent to the Pakistani police.
From that exposure, the station chief received death threats and quickly left the country, Obama administration officials said.
The new station chief had no intention of leaving Pakistan, American officials said. The New York Times generally does not identify American intelligence operatives working undercover.
Described as one of the agency’s toughest and most experienced officers, the current station chief supervised aspects of the successful raid against Bin Laden, including the C.I.A. safe house used to spy on the compound where Bin Laden lived for five years.
The safe house was located close enough to the compound at Abbottabad for C.I.A. agents to gather details of the daily life of the Qaeda leader that helped the planning for the operation, Obama administration officials said.
The relationship between the new station chief and the head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, has been described as particularly acrimonious by officials familiar with their meetings.
The two men first clashed over the case of Raymond A. Davis, a C.I.A. contractor who killed two Pakistanis in January during an attempted robbery. He was detained by Pakistan for more than a month, despite arguments from the Obama administration that he was protected by diplomatic immunity.
The killing of Bin Laden, and suggestions by the Obama administration that officials in the ISI may have known his whereabouts and provided him support, have infuriated General Pasha, Pakistani officials said.
General Pasha, and the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, were humiliated that the United States had deliberately not warned Pakistan of the raid, they said.
In what could be another flash point, Washington has asked Pakistan to give American officials access to the women who were at the compound in Abbottabad with Bin Laden and who have been questioned by the ISI since the raid a week ago. So far, such access had not been granted, an American official said Monday.
Mr. Gilani was the second official of the civilian government to publicly address the Bin Laden raid, while General Kayani and General Pasha have remained behind the scenes, limiting their remarks to a select group of Pakistani journalists last week.
According to accounts from two journalists who attended the closed-door session, the army chief criticized the civilian government for failing to give guidance to the military on counterterrorism and for never asking about the progress the military was making. General Kayani, they said, bitterly reproached the Americans for the commando raid, saying that now they would have “Hollywood movies for the next decade.”
Many expected the prime minister to use his speech to give an accounting of what Pakistan knew about Bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan, but instead he focused on the how the raid was a breach of Pakistani sovereignty, and warned that a repeat of such a raid to capture other high profile terrorists could be met with “full force.”
He defended the ISI as the best in the world, describing the agency as a “national asset” that had done more than any other intelligence agency to take on Al Qaeda. “No other country in the world and no other security agency has done so much to interdict Al Qaeda than the ISI and our armed forces,” he said.
Mr. Gilani’s account of the history of Al Qaeda essentially blamed the United States for allowing Islamic militants to take hold in Pakistan. “We didn’t invite Osama bin Laden to Pakistan or Afghanistan,” he said.
The United States, he said, had encouraged the Islamic militants who fought against the Soviet Union to disperse into Pakistan after that war was over in the late 1980s. Similarly, he said, the bombings of Qaeda militants at Tora Bora after the Sept. 11 attacks “resulted in the dispersal of Al Qaeda.”
“We had cautioned international forces on a flawed military campaign,” Mr. Gilani said.
But Mr. Gilani did not explain how Bin Laden managed to remain sequestered for five years in the garrison city of Abbottabad, about 75 miles by road from the national capital. He said that Lt. Gen. Javed Iqbal, a senior army general and close aide to General Kayani, would conduct an inquiry, but he gave no timeframe. A joint session of Parliament on May 13 would be given a briefing by the military, he said.
After the live broadcast of the speech, a leading Pakistani journalist, Mohammed Ziauddin, said the prime minister had failed to answer critical questions. “People have to be told the real facts, they can’t be glossed over,” said Mr. Ziauddin, the executive editor of The Express Tribune.
In unusually blunt statements, some politicians and journalists have called for a full public inquiry and have suggested that “heads should roll.” But the prime minister’s address fell short of both demands.


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