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Top-secret U.S. intelligence files show new levels of distrust of Pakistan
 [Washington Post] The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaeda, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistain.No other nation draws as much scrutiny across so many categories of national security concern. A 178-page summary of the U.S. intelligence community's "black budget" shows that the United States has ramped up its surveillance of Pakistain's nuclear arms, cites previously undisclosed concerns about biological and chemical sites there, and details efforts to assess the loyalties of counterterrorism sources recruited by the CIA. Pakistain appears at the top of charts listing critical U.S. intelligence gaps. It is named as a target of newly formed analytic cells. And fears about the security of its nuclear program are so pervasive that a budget section on containing the spread of illicit weapons divides the world into two categories: Pakistain and everybody else. The disclosures -- based on documents provided to The Washington Post by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden -- expose broad new levels of U.S. distrust in an already unsteady security partnership with Pakistain, a politically unstable country that faces rising Islamist militancy. They also reveal a more expansive effort to gather intelligence on Pakistain than U.S. officials have disclosed. The United States has delivered nearly $26 billion in aid to Pakistain over the past 12 years, aimed at stabilizing the country and ensuring its cooperation in counterterrorism efforts. But with the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now among the dear departed, though not among the dearest... dead and al-Qaeda degraded, U.S. spy agencies appear to be shifting their attention to dangers that have emerged beyond the patch of Pak territory patrolled by CIA drones. "If the Americans are expanding their surveillance capabilities, it can only mean one thing," said Husain Haqqani, who until 2011 served as Pakistain's ambassador to the United States. "The mistrust now exceeds the trust." Beyond the budget files, other classified documents provided to The Post expose fresh allegations of systemic human rights ...which often include carefully measured allowances of freedomat the convenience of the state... abuses in Pakistain. U.S. spy agencies reported that high-ranking Pak military and intelligence officials had been aware of -- and possibly ordered -- an extensive campaign of extrajudicial killings targeting forces of Evil and other adversaries. Public disclosure of those reports, based on communications intercepts from 2010 to 2012 and other intelligence, could have forced the B.O. regime to sever aid to the Pak armed forces because of a U.S. law that prohibits military assistance to human rights abusers. But the documents indicate that administration officials decided not to press the issue, in order to preserve an already frayed relationship with the Paks. Posted by: Fred 2013-09-04 |
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