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Cross-Post: How a Single Spy Helped Turn Pakistan Against the United States

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Munter saw some value to the drone program but was skeptical about the long-term benefits. Arriving in Islamabad at a time when relations between the United States and Pakistan were quickly deteriorating, Munter wondered whether the pace of the drone war might be undercutting relations with an important ally for the quick fix of killing midlevel terrorists. He would learn soon enough that his views about the drone program ultimately mattered little. In the Obama administration, when it came to questions about war and peace in Pakistan, it was what the C.I.A. believed that really counted.

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With Davis sitting in prison, Munter argued that it was essential to go immediately to the head of the I.S.I. at the time, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, to cut a deal. The U.S. would admit that Davis was working for the C.I.A., and Davis would quietly be spirited out of the country, never to return again. But the C.I.A. objected. Davis had been spying on a militant group with extensive ties to the I.S.I., and the C.I.A. didn’t want to own up to it. Top C.I.A. officials worried that appealing for mercy from the I.S.I. might doom Davis. He could be killed in prison before the Obama administration could pressure Islamabad to release him on the grounds that he was a foreign diplomat with immunity from local laws — even those prohibiting murder. On the day of Davis’s arrest, the C.I.A. station chief told Munter that a decision had been made to stonewall the Pakistanis. Don’t cut a deal, he warned, adding, Pakistan is the enemy.

The strategy meant that American officials, from top to bottom, had to dissemble both in public and in private about what exactly Davis had been doing in the country. On Feb. 15, more than two weeks after the shootings, President Obama offered his first comments about the Davis affair. The matter was simple, Obama said in a news conference: Davis, “our diplomat in Pakistan,” should be immediately released under the “very simple principle” of diplomatic immunity. “If our diplomats are in another country,” said the president, “then they are not subject to that country’s local prosecution.”

Calling Davis a “diplomat” was, technically, accurate. He had been admitted into Pakistan on a diplomatic passport. But there was a dispute about whether his work in the Lahore Consulate, as opposed to the American Embassy in Islamabad, gave him full diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. And after the shootings in Lahore, the Pakistanis were not exactly receptive to debating the finer points of international law. As they saw it, Davis was an American spy who had not been declared to the I.S.I. and whom C.I.A. officials still would not admit they controlled. General Pasha, the I.S.I. chief, spoke privately by phone and in person with Leon Panetta, then the director of the C.I.A., to get more information about the matter. He suspected that Davis was a C.I.A. employee and suggested to Panetta that the two spy agencies handle the matter quietly. Meeting with Panetta, he posed a direct question.

Was Davis working for the C.I.A.? Pasha asked. No, he’s not one of ours, Panetta replied. Panetta went on to say that the matter was out of his hands, and that the issue was being handled inside State Department channels. Pasha was furious, and he decided to leave Davis’s fate in the hands of the judges in Lahore. The United States had just lost its chance, he told others, to quickly end the dispute.

That the C.I.A. director would be overseeing a large clandestine network of American spies in Pakistan and then lie to the I.S.I. director about the extent of America’s secret war in the country showed just how much the relationship had unraveled since the days in 2002, when the I.S.I. teamed with the C.I.A. in Peshawar to hunt for Osama bin Laden in western Pakistan. Where had it gone so wrong?

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11 Comments

11 Comments

  1. Hassan

    April 15, 2013 at 12:38 PM

    Hmm, if I remember correctly, the two killed by Davis were ISI people trying to see what Davis is upto. The article did not mention that

    • Gibran

      April 15, 2013 at 9:04 PM

      Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh

      How do you know such a thing?

      • Hassan

        April 16, 2013 at 1:42 PM

        That is what I heard, I can go and check pakistani newspaper. But what I heard was that ISI agents were seeing what Davis is upto and he realized it and then killed them

        • Gibran

          April 16, 2013 at 4:30 PM

          Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh

          It my be a conspiracy theory.

          • Hassan

            April 16, 2013 at 11:43 PM

            See me response below

    • Mansoor Ansari

      April 16, 2013 at 12:09 AM

      No they were not, they were small time crooks.

  2. Hassan

    April 16, 2013 at 11:43 PM

    http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,2047149,00.html

    “Equally misleading, say Pakistani officials, is the claim in Pakistani media that Davis’ victims had been “ordinary men”, or even as “robbers,” as the State Department has suggested. “They were from the ISI,” says a government official, referring to Pakistan’s military intelligence agency. It isn’t clear, the official says, whether they were full paid-up agents or local informants.”

    and

    “The loss of two men linked with the ISI has injured the Pakistani military’s pride, officials say, and comes amid rising tensions with Washington”

    This is definitely the standard position of Pakistani government. So I am surprised this was not mentioned. (even if it was wrong claim)

    • Gibran

      April 16, 2013 at 11:47 PM

      Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh

      What reason would they have to say those two men are ISI agents? In all likelihood they weren’t. Allahu a’lam, the first cases to be judged on yawm al Qiyamah are cases of bloodshed.

    • Aly Balagamwala | DiscoMaulvi

      April 17, 2013 at 12:12 AM

      They were low-level informants. If they had really been higher-level ISI agents there would have been no way Davis could have walked out. And the relations would have soured much more.

  3. Hyde

    April 29, 2013 at 10:42 PM

    What was the purpose of this article to appear on MM ? If it was to garner some sort of sympathy for the state of Pakistan, I certainly don’t think it achieved its purpose. The real problem with Pakistan was 1947 and besides turning civil courts into shariah courts shows the contempt they have for authentic Islamic practices. Islam to be used as a crutch; you can use when it best serves and dispose of it when you don’t need it. I wonder if it was the generalissimo’s family that was involved, would he be so quick to get “blood money” ? (Does the Fauj give blood money to the people it takes “care off” in Baluchistan ?) The elite all over the muslim world are the same.

  4. Angry Muslimah

    September 12, 2013 at 11:29 AM

    what about the guy who was run over? what happend to the driver? nothing right. thats normal, look at fallujah and haditha and all the countless times they have killed muslims on purpose they dont bother to reprimand their army. bradley manning told of how civilians were being killed regularly, but his co said no problem!

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