When the US detained the Kuwaiti-Pakistani Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and interrogated him for years (including at least a month of harsh torture), he revealed a handful of al Qaeda operatives in the US. When Pakistan held the American contractor, Raymond Davis, and–as this NYT article specifies–had Pakistan’s intelligence service ISI interrogate him for 14 days, [...]

What happens with the Raymond Davis case, in the end, will likely not have very much to do with the Vienna Conventions. For that matter, we likely will never have enough of the unadulterated facts to know what should happen under the Vienna Conventions. But let’s suspend reality and see where an examination of the [...]

After the Guardian confirmed for the Anglo-American world what the rest of the world had already concluded–that Raymond Davis is some kind of spook–the government gave the American outlets that have been sitting on this knowledge the go-ahead to publish it. The New York Times had agreed to temporarily withhold information about Mr. Davis’s ties [...]

Dexter Filkins confirms today something that had been suggested in earlier reporting: Pakistan cooperated in our capture of Abdul Ghani Baradar in January to disrupt peace talks in Afghanistan. Now, seven months later, Pakistani officials are telling a very different story. They say they set out to capture Mr. Baradar, and used the C.I.A. to [...]

Aafia Siddiqui has been at the center of one of the many mysteries flowing from the Bush and Obama administrations’ conduct of  intelligence operations. A Pakistani native and former MIT scientist, background on Siddiqui can be found several places, including a Seminal diary by ondelette here. The stories of Siddiqui’s disappearance and  her recent trial [...]

Several of McCain’s mistakes last night–such as his inability to pronounce Ahmedinejad–are excusable. But I think McCain’s two gaffes on Paksitan deserve far more attantion.

Man, what would Reagan say? Dick Cheney can’t even pull an effective Reagan, launching potentially illegal covert ops involving Iran.

Pervez Musharraf’s party is projected to have lost today’s election–resoundingly. While that’s good for democracy, it’s unclear what it means for US policy in Pakistan.

John Robb comments on the telecommunications outages in the Middle East.

Walter Pincus finds a troubling appropriation in the Defense Appropriation this year: $75 million dollars for what sounds like early Special Forces intervention in Pakistan’s tribal lands.