Is Hamid Gul and ISI still that dreadful. Is he still Pakistan’s most dangerous?
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RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN—The former spy chief once dubbed the “most dangerous man” and more recently, “Pakistan’s Tony Soprano,” ends the interview with a fatherly pat on the cheek.
“When the war in Afghanistan is over, you’ll have to come back and meet the most dangerous man again,” says Hamid Gul with a chuckle, then offers a more formal handshake.
Gul, a former head of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI, has loomed large in the debate about ISI’s double dealings since this summer’s WikiLeaks of U.S. intelligence reports.
Most titillating in the release of more than 90,000 raw data tidbits was the report that the retired general who led the ISI nearly two decades ago met Al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan in 2006 and told them to “make the snow warm in Kabul . . . set Kabul aflame.”
That inspired the Soprano reference in a *Washington Post *column about Gul. The comparison, however, was lost on Gul. He had never heard of the television series.
“This Tony Soprano. Is he a hero or villain?” he asked in an interview with the Toronto Star this week.
How to explain the complicated mob boss who cries and visits a shrink?