WASHINGTON - The United States provided a steady stream of intelligence to Benazir Bhutto about threats against her before the former Pakistani prime minister was assassinated and advised her aides on how to boost security, although key suggestions appear to have gone unheeded, US officials said.Senior US diplomats had multiple conversations, including at least two private face-to-face meetings, with top members of BhuttoÂ’s Pakistan PeopleÂ’s Party to discuss threats on the Pakistani opposition leaderÂ’s life and review her security arrangements after a suicide bombing marred her initial return to Pakistan from exile in October, the officials told The Associated Press on Monday. The intelligence was also shared with the Pakistani government, the officials said.
| Which meant that a fair bit of the intel was passed on to the Talibs and al-Qaeda ... |
The officials said Bhutto and her aides were concerned, particularly after the October attack, but were adamant that in the absence of a specific and credible threat there would be few, if any, changes to her campaign schedule ahead of parliamentary elections.
| That's the real problem, isn't it: if you alter your behavior in the face of vague threats, you're no longer who you were. If you were the head of a political movement and you run for cover each time there is a threat, pretty soon you're useless as the leader of the movement. |
“We gave them a steady stream of intelligence,” one official said.
In the meetings with US officials, Bhutto aides did not ask the United States to help protect her but did inquire about the feasibility of hiring private US or British bodyguards, an idea discouraged by the Americans who argued that a noticeable Western security detail would increase the threat and might become a target itself, the officials said.
| Reasonable concern, unfortunately. |
However, there was no indication that BhuttoÂ’s team - including her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who attended at least one of the meetings - had followed through on the most critical of the recommendations, including the hiring of private guards and reducing her visibility in large crowds like the one in Rawalpindi where she was killed.
| Rawalpindi being an army garrison town, one would have hoped she would have been slightly safer there. |
| Both statements may be true ... |
While BhuttoÂ’s staff did take some steps to improve the safety of the partyÂ’s vehicles, the officials expressed surprise that the car in which she was riding when attacked had a sunroof and stressed that they would have strongly advised her against popping her head out of it in the presence of large numbers of people.
In addition to advising BhuttoÂ’s aides, as they worked to forge a political reconciliation and possible power-sharing deal between the opposition leader and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the US diplomats made numerous appeals to the Pakistani government to grant requests from her party to ensure BhuttoÂ’s safety, the officials said. But some requests, such as those for advanced technology and massive police presences in outlying towns, either could not be met or were deemed unreasonable by the government, a position the United States reluctantly conceded, the officials said.
| Exactly why would a 'massive police presence' be unreasonable? Next to Perv himself, she was the most marked person in all of Pakland. |
“We discussed those concerns regularly both with her and officials from her party and with President Musharraf and with his government,” he said. “We always, in every instance, took those concerns seriously. We were very active in trying to ensure that any information we had that was relevant to her situation was passed on to her as well as those responsible for her security.”