CIA, ISI locked in ‘spy battles’
*By Anwar Iqbal
Wednesday, 07 Jul, 2010 *
WASHINGTON, July 6: The CIA and ISI are locked in aggressive spy battles, with the US agency often trying to penetrate its Pakistani counterpart to learn more about Pakistan’s nuclear programme, reports The Washington Post.
The report, published on Tuesday, notes that “the CIA has repeatedly tried to penetrate the ISI and learn more about Pakistan’s nuclear programme”.
Similarly, the ISI has mounted its own operations to “gather intelligence on the CIA’s counterterrorism activities in the tribal lands and figure out what the CIA knows about the nuclear programme”.
The Post points out that “bumping up against the ISI is a way of life for the CIA in Pakistan”, which is the agency’s command centre for recruiting spies in Fata.
The Post, however, concedes that Pakistan has its own worries about the Americans. During the first term of the Bush administration, Pakistan became enraged after it shared intelligence with the US, only to learn the CIA station chief passed that information to the British.
The incident caused a serious row, one that threatened the CIA’s relationship with the ISI and deepened the levels of distrust between the two sides. Pakistan almost threw the CIA station chief out of the country.
CIA officials in Pakistan also coordinate Predator drone air strikes. The armed, unmanned planes take off from a base inside Balochistan known as “Rhine”.
Officials who spoke with the Post admit that the drones can’t hit their targets without help finding them. Such efforts would be impossible without Pakistan’s blessing.
A CIA spokesman, George Little, explains that despite discomforts, Pakistan remains a key ally in the war against terrorists. “It’s a crucial relationship,” he told the Post.
“We work closely with our Pakistani partners in fighting the common threat of terrorism. They’ve been vital to the victories achieved against Al Qaeda and its violent allies. And they’ve lost many people in the battle against extremism. No one should forget that.”
An ISI official in Islamabad denied the Post’s claim that the agency runs double agents to collect information about the CIA’s activities. He said the two agencies have a good working relationship and such allegations were meant to create friction between them.
But the Post reports that at one stage CIA became so concerned by a rash of cases involving suspected double agents that in 2009 it re-examined the spies it had on the payroll in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
An internal investigation revealed about a dozen double agents in CIA, stretching back several years. Most of them were being run by Pakistan. Other cases were deemed suspicious.
According to the Post, the CIA determined the efforts were part of an official offensive counter-intelligence programme being run by Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the ISI’s chief.
In addition to its concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear programme, the CIA continues to press the Pakistanis to step up their military efforts in North Waziristan.
Former CIA officials, however, told the Post that Pakistan rarely — if at all — has used its double agents to feed the CIA bad information. Rather, the agents were just gathering intelligence on American operations, seeing how the CIA responded and how information flowed.
Really cant understand what is happening. 