Here’s yet another sign of deteriorating U.S-Pakistan relations, the increasing question mark over the trustworthiness of Pakistan as an American intelligence ally, and yet another reason why Pakistan is going to face increasing resistance from Congress. The New York Times reports taht Pakistan has arrested CIA informants in the raid that got Osama bin Laden.
But Pakistan has just now denied that the key officer involved has been arrested. Here’s the Times report:
Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.
Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan’s support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighboring Afghanistan.
At a closed briefing last week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Michael J. Morell, the deputy C.I.A. director, to rate Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations, on a scale of 1 to 10.
“Three,” Mr. Morell replied, according to officials familiar with the exchange.
The fate of the C.I.A. informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, but American officials said that the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.
Some in Washington see the arrests as illustrative of the disconnect between Pakistani and American priorities at a time when they are supposed to be allies in the fight against Al Qaeda — instead of hunting down the support network that allowed Bin Laden to live comfortably for years, the Pakistani authorities are arresting those who assisted in the raid that killed the world’s most wanted man.
Here’s the official denial:
A Pakistani official denied Wednesday that an officer in its army was among those detained for allegedly helping the CIA track Osama bin Laden to the compound where U.S. forces killed him in May.
The New York Times, quoting unnamed sources, first reported the detention of five alleged informants Tuesday, saying a Pakistani army major who recorded license plate numbers of cars visiting the compound was among those detained.
A Western official in Pakistan confirmed that five Pakistanis were detained in connection with the May 2 raid by U.S. Navy SEALs on the compound in Abbottabad, 30 miles northeast of Islamabad.
But at a news conference, Pakistani army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said the report of the major’s detention was “false and totally baseless.” Neither the army nor Pakistan’s spy agency would confirm or deny the overall report about the detentions.
NPR’s Julie McCarthy, reporting from Islamabad, said the differing narratives emerging from Pakistan and the U.S. were “another indication perhaps of how each one is seeking to portray this post-Osama bin Laden reality.”
Pakistanis, she said, are deeply angered by the U.S. raid, which they see as a violation of their country’s sovereignty. Pakistanis “are also angry at their own army to a certain extent for allowing the Americans to swoop in and take bin Laden undetected,” she told Morning Edition.
The detainees included the owner of a CIA safe house that was used to conduct surveillance on the bin Laden hideout in Abbottabad, a U.S. official told AP.
CNN’s reporting confirms the New York Times report:
Pakistan’s intelligence agency has arrested a person who rented a safe house to the CIA before American special forces killed Osama bin Laden, as well as suspected CIA informants, a source familiar with the arrests told CNN Wednesday.
A second official confirmed that Pakistan had detained informants who gave information to the CIA before the raid but said he did not know the exact number of people arrested or when it happened.
The revelations, first reported by The New York Times, are likely to further strain what has become a rocky relationship between the two countries.
CIA Director Leon Panetta discussed the arrests Friday with Pakistan army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani and Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, Pakistan’s head of military intelligence, the official said. A United States official confirmed that the discussion had taken place but would not give details about the arrests.
The first Pakistani official did not say whether the owner of the safe house was suspected of being a CIA informant. He asked not to be named discussing sensitive internal matters.
The second Pakistani official asked to remain anonymous because he is not authorized to speak to the media.
But dealing with Pakistan is a delicate matter for the United States. As The Telegraph’s Ron Crilly in Islamabad notes, Pakistan is still vital of U.S security interests:
Pakistan has been a crucial ally of the US since 9/11, launching joint operations against militant groups and terrorist suspects.
The road from the port city of Karachi to the Afghan border, through the Khyber Pass, carries more than half of all supplies to Nato-led forces in Afghanistan.
The US is also keen to see Pakistan launch a military operation against militant hideouts in North Waziristan, a move seen as vital for reducing cross-border attacks on international forces in Afghanistan.
If Obama is to succeed in reducing troop levels in Afghanistan next month, he will also need co-operation from Pakistan in policing its border Pakistan has the power to undermine any peace talks in Afghanistan, potentially acting as a spoiler by using its leverage with Taliban leaders cloistered in the southern city of Quetta.
The problem for Pakistan and the Obama administration: reports such as this will raise eyebrows in Congress and lose Pakistan some friends — including friends who get to vote on the amount of money Pakistan can get from the U.S.
The depth of deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Pakistan and the countries’ intellligence agencies was underscored last week when U.S. officials came within a hair of directly accusing Pakistani officials of leaking information about a raid to militants:
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said Washington is disappointed and suspicious that militants in Pakistan were apparently tipped off that American intelligence officials had discovered two of their suspected bomb-making facilities, but stopped short of concluding that Pakistani officials had leaked the information to the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani insurgents.
The US provided Pakistan with the specific locations of insurgent bomb-making factories twice in recent weeks, only to see the militants learn their cover had been blown and vacate the sites before military action could be taken, US and Pakistani officials said.
“We don’t know the specifics of what happened. There are suspicions and there are questions, but I think there was clearly disappointment on our part,” The Washington Post quoted Gates, as telling a foreign news agency in an exclusive interview.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.