“If we had shielded Osama bin Laden, why would we have killed and arrested so many al-Qaeda leaders?” he asked with discernible indignation, according to parliamentarians. “Would we have hidden such a large target in such an exposed area? Without any guards or escape route? Our job is safeguarding the country.” The CIA, Gen. Pasha said, did not share intelligence with the ISI in the lead up to the raid.
Hide in the Open-First lesson in terrorism and espionage.
Exactly the ground for the present argument .
..”We are at a point in our history,” he said, according to two parliamentarians, “where we have to decide whether to stand up to America now or have [following] generations come to deride us.” …
Present imbroglio brought about by ISI.
Lieut. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the ISI chief, conceded that Osama bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan had been an “intelligence failure” and that he was prepared to step down and submit himself to any scrutiny, parliamentarians from both government and opposition parties told TIME on condition of anonymity. Gen. Pasha was speaking at a rare, closed-door briefing to Pakistan’s parliament where the lawmakers swore an oath not to reveal details discussed.
Intelligence Collaboration is the word.
“I present myself to the Prime Minister for any punishment and am willing to appear before any commission personally
Pasha was the third military leader to speak before the lawmakers, and the only one not in uniform. At the start of his speech, the general, though he conceded intelligence failure, passionately defended the ISI. He argued that the U.S., U.K. and India did not ridicule their intelligence agencies after 9/11, the 2005 London subway bombings and the 2008 Mumbai massacre. In those countries, retorted Senator Pervez Rashid of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif‘s opposition party, there is no history of military takeovers, a not unsubtle hint to the primacy of the armed forces in Pakistani politics. “There was no response from Pasha,” says a parliamentarian.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2071412,00.html?xid=newsletter-daily
In that vein, Pakistan’s chief spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, will not allow the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct operations in Pakistan without the full knowledge of the ISI, General Pasha said.
The spy chief did the talking. General Kayani attended the session, along with the heads of the air force and the navy, but did not speak, apparently to be spared the humiliation. Senior military officials, considered to be above civilian law and a power unto themselves, rarely appear before Parliament, or even its defense committees.
General Pasha told Parliament he had a “shouting match” with the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, over C.I.A. activities in Pakistan when they met recently in Washington, several lawmakers who attended the session said.
Do you mean to say that you do not keep tabs on CIA in Pakistan?
General Pasha then explained that Pakistan should be given credit for dismantling Al Qaeda even before the United States killed Bin Laden, according to the accounts from lawmakers after the session.
On your own, with out pressure from the US?
In a direct assault on statements by American officials that the ISI supports jihadist militant groups, including the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, General Pasha said there was no such policy. “We have nothing to do with the Haqqani network,” he was quoted as saying.
So, you have been supporting other terrorist networks.?
For the first time, according to one lawmaker, Air Marshal Hassan acknowledged that Pakistan allowed the United States to fly the drones out of Shamsi Air Base in Baluchistan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/world/asia/14pakistan.html?_r=1
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