Based on this series of articles Pakistan is being turned into an enemy -- if they are not considered one already by the globe-kicking empire builders of AmeriKa.
"US officials link Pakistani spies to reporter’s death" July 05, 2011|New York Times
ISLAMABAD - Obama administration officials believe that Pakistan’s powerful spy agency ordered the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had written scathing reports about the infiltration of militants in the country’s military, according to US officials.
Classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of Saleem Shahzad, 40, from the capital, Islamabad, and after the discovery of his body, showed that senior officials of the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, two senior administration officials said.
See: Shahzad's Service
The intelligence, which several administration officials said they believed was reliable, showed that the actions of the ISI were “barbaric and unacceptable,’’ one of the officials said. They would not disclose further details.
Like I'm going to believe anything transmitted in a government mouthpiece media.
But the disclosure of the information in itself could further aggravate the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan, which worsened significantly with the US commando raid two months ago that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistan safehouse and deeply embarrassed the Pakistani government, military, and intelligence hierarchy.
Repeating the bin Laden lie over and over never helps the credibility.
Obama administration officials will decide in the coming days how to present the information about Shahzad to the Pakistani government, an administration official said.
The disclosure of the intelligence was made in answer to questions about the possibility of its existence and was reluctantly confirmed by the two officials....
A third senior US official said there was enough other intelligence and indicators immediately after Shahzad’s death for the Americans to conclude that the ISI had ordered him killed.
“Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society,’’ said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the information.
A spokesman for the Pakistani intelligence agency, Zafar Iqbal, said in Islamabad last night that, “I am not commenting on this.’’
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"Pakistan lobbied illegally, FBI says; Interest group’s director arrested" July 20, 2011|By Matt Apuzzo and Zarar Khan, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - For years, the Pakistani spy agency funneled millions of dollars to a Washington nonprofit group in a secret effort to influence Congress and the White House, the Justice Department said yesterday in court documents that are certain to complicate already strained relations between the United States and Pakistan.
Had their own AIPAC operation going, huh?
FBI agents arrested Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, the executive director of the Kashmiri American Council, yesterday and charged him with being an unregistered agent of a foreign government.
That's the difference: AIPAC doesn't have to register as a foreign lobby.
Under the supervision of a senior member of Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, Fai donated money to political campaigns, wrote newspaper op-eds, organized congressional trips, and met with White House and State Department officials....
This happens all the time in Washington from many different interest groups.
Why is Pakistan being singled out?
Prosecutors said the Kashmiri American Council was being run in secret by the Pakistani government. Fai coordinated his activities with his ISI handlers and often communicated in coded e-mails, the FBI said. Pakistani officials allegedly reviewed Fai’s budget and told him what to do and with whom to meet....
Makes 'em sound like terrorists, doesn't it?
Fai is a leading voice in the debate over the future of Kashmir, the border area that India and Pakistan have fought over for years. He supports the pro-Pakistan viewpoint that Kashmiris should vote on whether to be part of Pakistan or India. India claims the territory as its own.
Latest related: Slow Saturday Special: Kashmir Rape Case
He is perhaps best known in Washington for organizing the annual Kashmir Peace Conference on Capitol Hill. The event is billed as an independent forum for Indian and Pakistani voices, but the Justice Department said the Pakistani government approved the speakers and gave Fai talking points to highlight.
Yeah, good thing the AmeriKan government never does anything like that.
Though the charges are not related to espionage, the arrest adds another strain to the already difficult relationship between the United States and Pakistan, which suffered after the United States found Osama bin Laden hiding inside Pakistan and killed him without telling the government there.
If they keep repeating one lie.... ????
ISI has a complicated relationship with US intelligence. The agency is a crucial ally in the war on terrorism but also works against the United States at times.
And vice-versa.
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And about the spying:
"Pakistan’s spy agency keeping tabs on diaspora in US" July 24, 2011|By Charlie Savage, Eric Schmitt, and Mark Mazzetti, New York Times
WASHINGTON - FBI agents hunting for Pakistani spies in the United States last year began tracking Mohammed Tasleem, an attachΓ© in Pakistan’s consulate in New York and a clandestine operative of Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.
Related: A Diplomatic CIA
"CIA officers serving overseas often use the State Department as their official “cover’’ to avoid revealing the true nature of their work"
Also see: CIA chief promises spies 'new cover’ for secret ops
Then I will simply take it for granted that all Americans overseas are CIA.
Tasleem, they found, had been posing as an FBI agent to extract information from Pakistanis in the United States and was issuing threats to keep them from speaking about Pakistan’s government.
Oh, THAT is why the FBI started tracking him!
His activities were part of what government officials in Washington, along with a range of Pakistani journalists and scholars, say is a systematic campaign to keep tabs on the Pakistani diaspora inside the United States.
The FBI brought Tasleem’s activities to Leon Panetta, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and last April, Panetta had a tense conversation with Pakistan’s spymaster, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha.
Within days, Tasleem was spirited from the United States, a quiet resolution typical of spy games among the world’s powers.
But some of the secrets of that hidden world became public last week when two Pakistani-Americans working for a charity that the FBI thinks is a front for Pakistan’s spy service were indicted....
The investigation exposed part of what US officials say is a broader campaign by the Pakistani spy agency to exert influence over lawmakers, stifle public dialogue critical of Pakistan’s military, and blunt the influence of India, Pakistan’s longtime adversary.
US officials said that compared with powers such as China and Russia - whose spies have long tried to steal US government and business secrets - the operations by Pakistan’s spy agency in this country are less extensive and less sophisticated. And they are certainly far more limited than the CIA’s activities inside Pakistan.
Yeah, but it is okay if the CIA f***s around in their country.
Related:
Israeli spy ring
Slow Saturday Special: Zionist Spies Set Free
The Russian-Israeli Mafia: Off-limits to FBI, US intelligence
Oh, that explains why I never see that organized crime ring in my paper.
Even so, officials and scholars say the campaign extends to issuing both tacit and overt threats against those who speak critically of the military.
The spy agency is widely feared in Pakistan because of these tactics. For example, US intelligence officials think that some of the agency’s operatives ordered the recent killing of a journalist there, Saleem Shahzad.
At the same time, the Pakistani spy agency remains a close ally of the CIA in the hunt for Al Qaeda operatives.
The CIA helping hunt "Al-CIA-Duh?"
It is a relationship that complicates the ability of the United States to pressure Pakistan to alter its tactics.
Yeah, the poor, impotent U.S. That explains all the mass-murdering missiles.
According to a US law enforcement official, the FBI had originally hoped to arrest two men working for the charity, the Kashmiri American Council, several times this year but was told each time by the State Department or the CIA that the arrests would aggravate the frayed US-Pakistan relations.
Last week’s arrests came as the CIA was trying to negotiate for the release of a Pakistani doctor jailed by Pakistan’s spy agency on accusations that he had helped the United States track down Osama bin Laden before his killing in May.
Several Pakistani journalists and scholars in the United States interviewed during the past week said that they were approached regularly by Pakistani officials, some of whom openly identified themselves as officials from the spy agency.
The journalists and scholars said the officials cautioned them against speaking out on politically delicate subjects such as the indigenous insurgency in Baluchistan or accusations of human rights abuses by Pakistani soldiers. The verbal pressure is often accompanied by veiled threats against family members in Pakistan, they said....
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And what's the first thing AmeriKa always does?
Cut off the money:
"US withholding millions in aid to Pakistan" July 10, 2011|By Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez, New York Times
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is suspending and, in some cases, canceling hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to the Pakistani military, in a move to chasten Pakistan for expelling American military trainers and to press its army to fight militants more effectively.
Coupled with a statement from the top American military officer last week linking Pakistan’s military spy agency to the recent murder of a Pakistani journalist, the halting or withdrawal of military equipment and other aid to Pakistan illustrates the depth of the debate inside the Obama administration over how to change the behavior of one of its key counterterrorism partners.
About $800 million in military aid and equipment, or over one-third of the more than $2 billion in annual American security assistance to Pakistan, could be affected, three senior United States officials said.
This aid includes about $300 million to reimburse Pakistan for some of the costs of deploying more than 100,000 soldiers along the Afghan border to combat terrorism, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in training assistance and military hardware, according to half a dozen congressional, Pentagon, and other administration officials who were granted anonymity to discuss the politically delicate matter.
Yes, Americans, your tax dollars are going to PAY for OTHER NATION'S MILITARY OPERATIONS while YOUR SOCIAL SERVICES are being CUT!
“When it comes to our military aid,’’ Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a Senate committee last month “we are not prepared to continue providing that at the pace we were providing it unless and until we see certain steps taken.’’
American officials say they would probably resume equipment deliveries and aid if relations improve and Pakistan pursues terrorists more aggressively. The cutoffs do not affect any immediate deliveries of military sales to Pakistan, like F-16 fighter jets, or nonmilitary aid, the officials said.
While some senior administration officials have concluded that Pakistan will never be the kind of partner the administration hoped for when President Obama entered office, others emphasize that the United States cannot risk a full break in relations or a complete cutoff of aid akin to what happened in the 1990s, when Pakistan was caught developing nuclear weapons.
But many of the recent aid curtailments are clearly intended to force the Pakistani military to make a difficult choice between backing the country that finances much of its operations and equipment, or continuing to provide secret support for the Taliban and other militants fighting American soldiers in Afghanistan.
“We have to continue to emphasize with the Pakistanis that in the end it’s in their interest to be able to go after these targets as well,’’ Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told reporters on Friday en route to Afghanistan.
In private briefings to senior congressional staff members last month, however, Pentagon officials made clear that the administration was taking a tougher line toward Pakistan and seriously reassessing whether it could still be an effective partner in fighting terrorists....
Comments last week by Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also reflected a potentially more confrontational approach to Pakistan. Mullen became the first US official to publicly accuse Pakistan of ordering the kidnapping, torture, and death of the journalist, Saleem Shahzad, whose mutilated body was found in early June.
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And just in case you are not convinced:
"Shadowy bin Laden essay contest held" by July 02, 2011|Associated Press
LAHORE, Pakistan - A literary contest to glorify the slain Al Qaeda chief.
The poem and essay competition at the prestigious Punjab University shows the footholds of hard-line Islamists on college campuses and growing efforts to raise their profile and influence even in the relatively cosmopolitan atmosphere of Pakistan’s culture capital, Lahore.
The contest’s organizers have kept their identities hidden. But many students and teachers suspect it is being held by a powerful Islamist student group that has increasingly enforced its conservative religious views on the rest of the campus - sometimes violently....
Its leaders have publicly acknowledged that many members support bin Laden and have a profound hatred for the United States.
The group’s rising ambitions have intensified fears about the radicalization of Pakistan’s educated middle class, which makes up a large part of the public university’s population.
The educated classes have been seen as a bulwark against militant groups such as the Taliban in the nuclear-armed country.
Can we invade yet?
Too bad AmeriKa no longer has a middle class or educated classes.
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