US-Pakistani relations really didn’t need this right now. Pakistan arrested–and then released, apparently because the person’s claim to have diplomatic status checked out–an American with high tech gear allegedly snooping around a nuke lab. The American diplomat, purportedly called Matthew Bennett, was found near Fateh Jang by ISI and MI personnel who had been watching [...]

It’s probably just a coincidence that the US finally got Osama bin Laden at a time when its relationship with Pakistan is at a post-9/11 low. President Obama said the discovery of OBL came from a lead first generated last August. Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was [...]

To a degree, this reminds me of the Joshua Claus moment, when DOD banned reporters like Carol Rosenberg and Michelle Shephard because they uttered the name “Joshua Claus” in their coverage of his testimony in Omar Khadr’s trial. (Shephard had interviewed him previously, so they were basically asking her to forget information she had gathered [...]

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, [...]

Last we heard about the families of Raymond Davis’ victims, they were held in custody until they agreed to accept the blood money Pakistan offered on our behalf. Things are looking up for the family members, though. Eighteen of them have been flown to UAE to be resettled. A chartered plane carrying 18 family members [...]

As Jim White reported this morning, Raymond Davis has been released after the families of his victims were paid blood money per Sharia law. We’ve really gotten to bizarro-land when a possible Blackwater contractor has been saved by Sharia law. But wait! Hillary says we didn’t pay the blood money ourselves. QUESTION: Okay, we’ll jump [...]

The Guardian has its version of the Arthur Brisbane article approving of NYT’s decision to withhold all mention of Raymond Davis’ identity. One of the two main reasons why the Guardian chose to publish even as CIA and MI5 were warning that that might endanger Davis is the one I keep pointing out: all the [...]

There are a couple of funny things about NYT’s public editor Arthur Brisbane’s article approving the NYT’s decision to sit on news of Raymond Davis’ CIA affiliation. Check out whom he consults for guidelines on what the NYT should or shouldn’t publish. Bob Woodward, who wrote about secret operations in Pakistan in his recent book [...]

The story of the day is from Michael Hastings, fresh off winning a Polk Award for his reporting on the insubordination of key members of Stanley McChrystal’s staff. In today’s story, he describes how Lieutenant General William Caldwell ordered a PsyOp unit to manipulate Senators–including John McCain, Carl Levin, Jack Reed, and Al Franken–to support [...]

As I have followed the Raymond Davis saga, this passage from an early Jeremy Scahill story on the CIA/JSOC/Blackwater programs operating in Pakistan, has haunted me. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to [...]