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CIA agent who killed two men in Pakistan
Undermining & blackwashing agencies - 22.02.2011 10:37
Pakistan intelligence: "US killer official linked to CIA"
Pakistani intelligence has linked a US Consulate employee who shot dead two Pakistani citizens last month to America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), a report says. A Pakistani intelligence official said Monday that Raymond Davis, an American official arrested last month for killing two Pakistani men in Lahore, was working undercover for the CIA.
"It is beyond any shadow of a doubt that he was working for CIA," AFP quoted an unnamed official from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. "He's on contract. He's not a regular CIA guy, but he's working for CIA. That's confirmed," the Pakistani official added. "He was sort of working behind our backs. Normal CIA guys -- we know who they are. We interact with them regularly. We know they're CIA, but in this particular case we had no knowledge of him," he went on to say.
Washington has been putting pressure on Islamabad to officially declare Davis a diplomat in an attempt to end his prosecution. However, the exact identity of the American national is a subject of controversy following the initial statement of the US State Department which noted that Davis is an "incorrect name" despite all his entries with the same name on his passport stamped with a business visa.
Davis, a former Special Forces soldier, shot and killed two men on January 27th in what he said was a robbery attempt. The case has strained ties between Islamabad and Washington.
 http://www.indymedia-letzebuerg.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=69256&Itemid=28
Published by press TV Tuesday, 22 February 2011
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Ewen MacAskill and Declan Walsh
guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 February 2011 21.48 GMT
US gives fresh details of CIA agent who killed two men in Pakistan shootout
US reveals that CIA agent Raymond Davis worked for private security firm Xe,
formerly known as Blackwater
US officials have provided fresh details about Raymond Davis, the CIA agent at the centre of a diplomatic stand-off in Pakistan, including confirmation that he had worked for the private security contractor Xe, formerly known as Blackwater. They also disclosed for the first time that he had been providing security for a CIA team tracking militants.
Davis was attached to the CIA's Global Response Staff, whose duties include protecting case officers when they meet with sources. He was familiarising himself with a sensitive area of Lahore on the day he shot dead two Pakistanis.
The New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and other media outlets reported for the first time that Davis is a CIA employee. They said they had been aware of his status but kept it under wraps at the request of US officials who said they feared for his safety if involvement with the spy agency was to come out. The officials claimed that he is at risk in the prison in Lahore. The officials released them from their obligation after the Guardian on Sunday reported that Davis was a CIA agent.
Davis shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore last month who he says had been trying to rob him. A third Pakistani man was killed by a car driven by Americans apparently on their way to rescue Davis.
Confirmation that he worked for Xe could prove even more problematic than working for the CIA, given the extent of hatred towards Blackwater, whose staff have gained a reputation in Pakistan as trigger-happy. For Pakistanis the word "Blackwater" has become a byword for covert American operations targeting the country's nuclear capability. Newspaper reports have been filled with lurid reports of lawless operatives roaming the country.
US officials have reiterated their concern about Lahore's Kot Lakhpat jail where Davis is being held, saying he had been moved to a separate section of the prison, that the guards' guns had been taken away from for fear they might kill him, and that detainees had been previously killed by guards. They are also concerned about protesters storming the prison or that he might be poisoned, and that dogs were being used to taste or smell the food for poison.
However, the authorities in Pakistan stressed the stringent measures they have put in place to protect Davis in Kot Lakhpat following angry public rallies in which his effigy was burned and threats from extremist clerics.
PJ Crowley, the US state department spokesman, said: "Obviously, we are concerned about his safety. We have had multiple conversations with the government of Pakistan regarding his current surroundings. They have told us that he is in the safest possible location in Lahore. And clearly, we hold the government of Pakistan fully responsible for his safety."
Surveillance cameras are trained on his cell in an isolation wing, and a ring of paramilitary troops are posted outside. About 25 jihadi prisoners have been transferred to other facilities.
The revelations about Davis will complicate further the impasse between the US and Pakistan. Washington says he has diplomatic immunity and should be released but the Pakistan government is in a bind, facing the danger of a public backlash if it complies.
Until Sunday, the US had said Davis was a diplomat, doing technical and administrative work at the embassy. It says that because he has diplomatic immunity, he should be released immediately.
The Pakistani prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, told parliament on Monday he would safeguard the country's "sovereignty and dignity" as it sought to resolve the diplomatic impasse with the US. "We are firmly resolved to adopt a course that accords with the dictates of justice and the rule of law. My government will not compromise on Pakistan's sovereignty and dignity," said Gilani.
The Obama administration is exerting fierce pressure on Pakistan to release Davis. But President Asif Ali Zardari's government, faced with a wave of public outrage, has prevaricated on the issue, and says it cannot decide on immunity issue until 14 March. For many Pakistanis the case has come to represent their difficult relationship with the US, in which multibillion dollar aid packages are mingled with covert activities targeting Islamist extremists.
Davis is currently on Pakistan's "exit control list", meaning he cannot leave the country without permission. But the two men who came to his rescue in a jeep that knocked over and killed a motorcyclist are believed to have already fled the country. Davis claimed to be acting in self-defence, firing on a pair of suspected robbers. But eyebrows were raised when it emerged that he shot the men 10 times, one as he fled the scene.
Pakistani prosecutors say Davis used excessive force and have charged him with two counts of murder and one of illegal possession of a Glock 9mm pistol. There have also been claims that the dead men were working for the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, with orders to follow Davis.
The military spy agency cooperates with the CIA in its tribal belt drone programme, but resents US intelligence collection elsewhere in the country.In spite of the lurid conspiracy tales in Pakistan about Blackwater, US officials say that in reality Blackwater has had two major contracts in Pakistan - loading missiles onto CIA drones at the secret Shamsi airbase in Balochistan, and supervising the construction of a police training facility in Peshawar. The Davis furore has not, however, stopped the controversial drone strike programme. News emerged of a fresh attack on a militant target in South Waziristan, the first in nearly one month. Pakistani intelligence officials told AP that foreigners were among the dead including three people from Turkmenistan and two Arabs.
Rocky relations
The CIA and Pakistan's ISI have long had a rocky relationship. It started in the 1980s jihad, when the ISI funnelled billions of dollars in CIA-funded weapons to anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan.
But the two fell out in 2001 over CIA accusations that the ISI was playing a "double game" – attacking some Islamist militants while secretly supporting others.
In August 2008 the CIA deputy chief, Stephen Kappes, flew to Islamabad with evidence suggesting the ISI plotted the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul that killed 54 people. The ISI, in turn, complained that the US came with unrealistic expectations and an aggressive attitude.
Yet at the same time the agencies co-operated closely, mostly on the CIA drone campaign against al-Qaida militants along the Afghan border.
In 2009 the ISI praised the CIA for killing the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. But recently things soured again. Last December the CIA station chief was forced to quit Pakistan after being publicly identified (US officials blamed an ISI leak); while Pakistani spies were angered that their chief, General Shuja Pasha, was named in a US lawsuit brought in a New York court by victims of the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/21/raymond-davis-pakistan-cia-blackwater
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Shaun Tandon – Tue Feb 8, 11:01 pm ET
US lawmakers threaten Pakistan aid cut over detention
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US lawmakers threatened to cut aid to Pakistan unless it freed an American detained over a shadowy shooting, as Washington intensified pressure on its uneasy war partner.
The United States has already warned that high-level dialogue would be at risk unless Pakistan releases US government employee Raymond Davis, who said he was acting in self-defense when he shot dead two men in Lahore last month.
Three members of the House of Representatives drove home the point on a visit to Pakistan, telling Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani starkly that the US Congress was working on its budget and looking for areas to cut.
"It is imperative that they release him and there is certainly the possibility that there would be repercussions if they don't," Representative John Kline, a Republican from Minnesota, told reporters on his return.
"It's entirely possible that a member of Congress would come down and offer an amendment to cut funding for Pakistan based on their detaining Mr. Davis," Kline said.
"My guess is there would be a lot of support for such an amendment, frankly, because of the outrage of detaining an American with diplomatic immunity," he said.
Asked if aid would be at risk if Davis stayed in custody, Representative Buck McKeon, who heads the House Armed Services Committee, said: "It very well could be."
Davis was arrested on January 27 after shooting the two Pakistanis, saying he feared they would rob him. A third Pakistani was run over and killed by a US consulate vehicle that had come to assist Davis, according to police.
The incident has set off protests in Pakistan, where anti-US sentiment has long run high. Shumaila Faheem, the wife of one of the two men who was gunned down, committed suicide on Sunday by taking poison.
Many observers have questioned whether Davis was an ordinary diplomat. Pakistani police said he traveled around with loaded weapons and a GPS navigation system.
"This case exposes a kind of dark side of this relationship between Pakistan and the US, which is what feeds a lot of the suspicions," said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council think tank.
Nawaz was not surprised by US officials' insistence on freeing the American, saying: "There are so many layers to this story, on who he was and what he was doing, so clearly they don't want him out of their sight."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declined to meet Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at a weekend conference in Munich, in a show of displeasure over the case, diplomats said.
US officials have told Pakistan that the Davis case "has to be resolved before we can move to a higher level of discussion," one diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Officials stressed that the United States has not suspended contact with Pakistan, a key partner in the US war effort in Afghanistan.
"We continue to engage the Pakistani government at the highest levels to seek resolution of this case," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told AFP.
"We continue to stress that the US diplomat has diplomatic immunity and should be released," he said.
Clinton still met in Munich with General Ashfaq Kayani, the head of Pakistan's army, and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari held talks on Monday with the US ambassador, Cameron Munter.
Pakistan's ambassador to Washington, Husain Haqqani, wrote on micro-blogging service Twitter that relations between the countries "have proved resilient in the past" and that the "strategic partnership will endure, notwithstanding challenges."
President Barack Obama's administration has declared combating anti-Americanism and reducing the allure of extremists in Pakistan to be a top priority.
Congress in 2009 approved a five-year, $7.5-billion aid package meant to build schools, infrastructure and democratic institutions as Pakistan ended a decade of military rule.
In October, the Obama administration proposed another $2 billion in assistance for Pakistan's military, often seen as the key power center in the country.
Nawaz, the analyst, said the administration would need "powerful gestures," including compensation for the families of the shooting victims, to help rebuild public sentiment in Pakistan.
But Nawaz said Pakistan's leaders also had themselves to blame for letting the case drag on, saying it had become a "political kickball" between the central government in Islamabad and the Punjab provincial authorities.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110209/pl_afp/uspakistanunrestshootingdiplomacy
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February 21, 2011 - NYTimes
Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, Ashley Parker from Big Stone Gap, Va., and Jane Perlez from Pakistan. Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Waqar Gillani from Lahore, Pakistan.
American Held in Pakistan Worked With C.I.A.
WASHINGTON — The American arrested in Pakistan after shooting two men at a crowded traffic stop was part of a covert, C.I.A.-led team collecting intelligence and conducting surveillance on militant groups deep inside the country, according to American government officials.
Working from a safe house in the eastern city of Lahore, the detained American contractor, Raymond A. Davis, a retired Special Forces soldier, carried out scouting and other reconnaissance missions as a security officer for the Central Intelligence Agency case officers and technical experts doing the operations, the officials said.
Mr. Davis’s arrest and detention last month, which came after what American officials have described as a botched robbery attempt, have inadvertently pulled back the curtain on a web of covert American operations inside Pakistan, part of a secret war run by the C.I.A.
The episode has exacerbated already frayed relations between the American intelligence agency and its Pakistani counterpart, created a political dilemma for the weak, pro-American Pakistani government, and further threatened the stability of the country, which has the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenal.
Without describing Mr. Davis’s mission or intelligence affiliation, President Obama last week made a public plea for his release. Meanwhile, there have been a flurry of private phone calls to Pakistan from Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all intended to persuade the Pakistanis to release the secret operative.
Mr. Davis has worked for years as a C.I.A. contractor, including time at Blackwater Worldwide, the private security firm (now called Xe) that Pakistanis have long viewed as symbolizing a culture of American gun-slinging overseas.
The New York Times had agreed to temporarily withhold information about Mr. Davis’s ties to the agency at the request of the Obama administration, which argued that disclosure of his specific job would put his life at risk. Several foreign news organizations have disclosed some aspects of Mr. Davis’s work with the C.I.A.
On Monday, American officials lifted their request to withhold publication. George Little, a C.I.A. spokesman, declined to comment specifically on the Davis matter, but said in a statement: “Our security personnel around the world act in a support role providing security for American officials. They do not conduct foreign intelligence collection or covert operations.”
Since the United States is not at war in Pakistan, the American military is largely restricted from operating in the country. So the Central Intelligence Agency has taken on an expanded role, operating armed drones that kill militants inside the country and running covert operations, sometimes without the knowledge of the Pakistanis.
Several American and Pakistani officials said that the C.I.A. team with which Mr. Davis worked in Lahore was tasked with tracking the movements of various Pakistani militant groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, a particularly violent group that Pakistan uses as a proxy force against India but that the United States considers a threat to allied troops in Afghanistan. For the Pakistanis, such spying inside their country is an extremely delicate issue, particularly since Lashkar has longstanding ties to Pakistan’s intelligence service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
Still, American and Pakistani officials use Lahore as a base of operations to investigate the militant groups and their madrasas in the surrounding area.
The officials gave various accounts of the makeup of the covert team and of Mr. Davis, who at the time of his arrest was carrying a Glock pistol, a long-range wireless set, a small telescope and a headlamp. An American and a Pakistani official said in interviews that operatives from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command had been assigned to the group to help with the surveillance missions. Other American officials, however, said that no military personnel were involved with the team.
Special operations troops routinely work with the C.I.A. in Pakistan. Among other things, they helped the agency pinpoint the location of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy Taliban commander who was arrested in January 2010 in Karachi.
Even before the arrest of Mr. Davis, his C.I.A. affiliation was known to Pakistani authorities, who keep close tabs on the movements of Americans. His visa, presented to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in late 2009, describes his job as a “regional affairs officer,” a common job description for officials working with the agency.
According to that application, Mr. Davis carried an American diplomatic passport and was listed as “administrative and technical staff,” a category that typically grants diplomatic immunity to its holder.
American officials said that with Pakistan’s government trying to clamp down on the increasing flow of Central Intelligence Agency officers and contractors trying to gain entry to Pakistan, more of these operatives have been granted “cover” as embassy employees and given diplomatic passports.
As Mr. Davis is held in a jail cell in Lahore — the subject of an international dispute at the highest levels — new details are emerging of what happened in a dramatic daytime scene on the streets of central Lahore, a sprawling city, on Jan. 27.
By the American account, Mr. Davis was driving alone in an impoverished area rarely visited by foreigners, and stopped his car at a crowded intersection. Two Pakistani men brandishing weapons hopped off motorcycles and approached. Mr. Davis killed them with the Glock, an act American officials insisted was in self-defense against armed robbers.
But on Sunday, the text of the Lahore Police Department’s crime report was published in English by a prominent daily newspaper, The Daily Times, and it offered a somewhat different account.
It is based in part on the version of events Mr. Davis gave Pakistani authorities, and it seems to raise doubts about his claim that the shootings were in self-defense.
According to that report, Mr. Davis told the police that after shooting the two men, he stepped out of the car to take photographs of one of them, then called the United States Consulate in Lahore for help.
But the report also said that the victims were shot several times in the back, a detail that some Pakistani officials say proves the killings were murder. By this account, Mr. Davis fired at the men through his windshield, then stepped out of the car and continued firing. The report said that Mr. Davis then got back in his car and “managed to escape,” but that the police gave chase and “overpowered” him at a traffic circle a short distance away.
In a bizarre twist that has further infuriated the Pakistanis, a third man was killed when an unmarked Toyota Land Cruiser, racing to Mr. Davis’s rescue, drove the wrong way down a one-way street and ran over a motorcyclist. As the Land Cruiser drove “recklessly” back to the consulate, the report said, items fell out of the vehicle, including 100 bullets, a black mask and a piece of cloth with the American flag.
Pakistani officials have demanded that the Americans in the S.U.V. be turned over to local authorities, but American officials say they have already left the country.
Mr. Davis and the other Americans were heavily armed and carried sophisticated equipment, the report said.
The Pakistani Foreign Office, generally considered to work under the guidance of the ISI, has declined to grant Mr. Davis what it calls the “blanket immunity” from prosecution that diplomats enjoy. In a setback for Washington, the Lahore High Court last week gave the Pakistani government until March 14 to decide on Mr. Davis’s immunity.
The pro-American government led by President Asif Ali Zardari, fearful for its survival in the face of a surge of anti-American sentiment, has resisted strenuous pressure from the Obama administration to release Mr. Davis to the United States. Some militant and religious groups have demanded that Mr. Davis be tried in the Pakistani courts and hanged.
Relations between the two spy agencies were tense even before the episode on the streets of Lahore. In December, the C.I.A.’s top clandestine officer in Pakistan hurriedly left the country after his identity was revealed. Some inside the agency believe that ISI operatives were behind the disclosure — retribution for the head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, being named in a New York City lawsuit filed in connection with the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, in which members of his agency are believed to have played a role. ISI officials denied that was the case.
One senior Pakistani official close to the ISI said Pakistani spies were particularly infuriated over the Davis episode because it was such a public spectacle. Besides the three Pakistanis who were killed, the widow of one of the victims committed suicide by swallowing rat poison.
Moreover, the official said, the case was embarrassing for the ISI for its flagrancy, revealing how much freedom American spies have to roam around the country.
“We all know the spy-versus-spy games, we all know it works in the shadows,” the official said, “but you don’t get caught, and you don’t get caught committing murders.”
Mr. Davis, burly at 36, appears to have arrived in Pakistan in late 2009 or early 2010. American officials said he operated as part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Global Response Staff in various parts of the country, including Lahore and Peshawar.
Documents released by Pakistan’s Foreign Office showed that Mr. Davis was paid $200,000 a year, including travel expenses and insurance.
He is a native of rural southwest Virginia, described by those who know him as an unlikely figure to be at the center of international intrigue.
He grew up in Big Stone Gap, a small town named after the gap in the mountains where the Powell River emerges.
The youngest of three children, Mr. Davis enlisted in the military after graduating from Powell Valley High School in 1993.
“I guess about any man’s dream is to serve his country,” his sister Michelle Wade said.
Shrugging off the portrait of him as an international spy comfortable with a Glock, Ms. Wade said: “He would always walk away from a fight. That’s just who he is.”
His high school friends remember him as good-natured, athletic, respectful. He was also a protector, they said, the type who stood up for the underdog.
“Friends with everyone, just a salt of the earth person,” said Jennifer Boring, who graduated from high school with Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis served in the infantry in Europe — including a short tour as a peacekeeper in Macedonia — before joining the Third Special Forces Group in 1998, where he remained until he left the Army in 2003. The Army Special Forces — known as the Green Berets — are an elite group trained in weapons and foreign languages and cultures.
It is unclear when Mr. Davis began working for the C.I.A., but American officials said that in recent years he worked for the spy agency as a Blackwater contractor and later founded his own small company, Hyperion Protective Services.
Mr. Davis and his wife have moved frequently, living in Las Vegas, Arizona and Colorado.
One neighbor in Colorado, Gary Sollee, said that Mr. Davis described himself as “former military,” adding that “he’d have to leave the country for work pretty often, and when he’s gone, he’s gone for an extended period of time.”
Mr. Davis’s sister, Ms. Wade, said she was awaiting her brother’s safe return.
“The only thing I’m going to say is I love my brother,” she said. “I love my brother, God knows, I love him. I’m just praying for him.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/world/asia/22pakistan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/world/asia/22pakistan.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2
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February 21, 2011 08:42 PM - Malou Innocent - Foreign Policy Analyst, Cato Institute*
America's Contribution to Pakistan's Anti-American Radicalism
Last month in Lahore, U.S. citizen Raymond Davis shot and killed two armed Pakistani men whom he thought were trying to rob him. U.S. officials claimed that Davis was a diplomatic employee (despite not having a diplomatic visa) and that his detention violated the Geneva Convention. Worse, the U.S. Consulate vehicle Davis summoned to the scene drove the wrong way down a one way street, killing a motorcyclist and then speeding away. Adding to the outrage was news that the widow of one of Davis's victims committed suicide. Well, today the New York Times reported:
"Mr. Davis's arrest and detention, which came after what American officials have described as a botched robbery attempt, has inadvertently pulled back the curtain on a web of covert American operations inside Pakistan, part of a secret war run by the C.I.A. It has exacerbated already frayed relations between the American intelligence agency and its Pakistani counterpart, created a political dilemma for the weak, pro-American Pakistani government, and further threatened the stability of the country, which has the world's fastest growing nuclear arsenal." [Emphasis added.]
No longer can U.S. policymakers be willfully blind to the reality that present operations are pushing the region toward further Balkanization and leading to the self-fulfilling prophecy of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan. Yet over the past several years, the U.S. has expanded the pretext for prolonging the war in Afghanistan to a not-so-secret covert war in neighboring Pakistan and possibly elsewhere. For years I have told anybody who would listen how U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan contribute to Pakistan's slow-motion collapse. The Raymond Davis case is just the latest example of how the foreign occupation of Afghanistan--and Pakistan's acquiescence to American policy--spawns more recruits for al Qaeda-linked groups seeking to hasten Pakistan's disintegration. In essence, U.S. foreign policy exacerbates Pakistan's anti-American radicalism.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, let's imagine for a moment if the situation were reversed. Rather than in Lahore, this incident happened in New York City. And rather than an American "official" shooting and killing two Pakistanis it was a Pakistani "official" who shot and killed two Americans, in broad daylight. The public outcry would put last year's "Ground Zero mosque" debate to shame. Major American cities would be on lock down. American Muslims would be subject to even more popular media criticism then they are now. And U.S. officials would be under public pressure to scuttle the pretense of diplomatic immunity and label the killings an act of Islamist terrorism. Would U.S. officials bend to pressure from Islamabad? What if Pakistan threatened to stop assisting America's war in neighboring Afghanistan?
It shouldn't be a mystery why a 2006 Government Accountability Office report noted, "U.S. foreign policy is the major root cause behind anti-American sentiments among Muslim populations." And why a 2004 Pentagon Defense Science Board report observed, "Muslims do not hate our freedom, but rather, they hate our policies." All of this is not to say that Mr. Davis is in the wrong. After all, innocent until proven guilty is the motto America lives by, even though it is not always the principle it champions.
*Malou Innocent, a foreign policy analyst Cato Institute, libertarian think tank Washington, D.C.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/malou-innocent/americas-contribution-to_b_826302.html
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| Read more about: anti-fascisme / racisme antimilitarisme vrijheid, repressie & mensenrechten | | supplements | | US Caught in Big Lie About Raymond Davis | DAVE LINDORFF - 23.02.2011 16:28
February 22, 2011 - DAVE LINDORFF
CounterPunch Got It Right
US Caught in Big Lie About Raymond Davis
Talk about getting caught in a Big Lie. So desperate has been the US effort to get the killer Raymond Davis sprung from police custody in Lahore, Pakistan following his execution-style slaughter of two Pakistani intelligence operatives in broad daylight in a crowded commercial area, that the government trotted out President Obama to declare that Pakistan was violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations by holding "our diplomat," whom he insisted had only been defending himself, and should in any case be entitled to absolute immunity.
Now both the Guardian newspaper in the UK over the weekend, and the Associated Press today are reporting that sources in both the Pakistani and American governments are confirming that Davis works for the CIA. The AP is reporting that he is a "CIA security contractor," which is something less and a little more amorphous than a CIA employee, and still leaves open the question of who he actually is and who he actually works for, but more on that later.
The Guardian noted in its article that Davis's wife had provided information numbers for him to a local TV station and that those numbers turned out to be the CIA. Meanwhile, Agence France Press reported over the weekend that Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), a loose-tongued member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also apparently inadvertently slipped up and disclosed on the Senate floor that Davis is an "agent", saying, "We can't throw this agent over."
America's and the President's reputations take another beating as a result of the handling of this bloody incident. Not only did the US dispatch to Islamabad members of Congress, including the Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to press for Davis's release, threatening the withholding of aid to Pakistan (our ostensible ally in the Afghanistan War!). It provided a patently false document to the Pakistani foreign office claiming Davis to be an employee of the US Embassy in Islamabad (which would have meant he'd have immunity from arrest and detention), when he was actually working out of the Lahore Consulate, where he would not be entitled to any immunity for his actions). It also tried to exchange his regular passport for a diplomatic one a day after his arrest, again retroactively trying to get him immunity from prosecution for his murderous acts.
Furthermore, the US government, according to the Guardian, induced major US news organizations to hide what they knew about Davis's real role from the American public. The paper reported that several US news organizations had also learned on their own that Davis is a spy, but then voluntarily withheld the information from the American public "at the request of the Obama administration," which preferred to stick to the fictional story line that Pakistan is holding an American "diplomat" in "violation of the Vienna Convention" on diplomatic immunity.
Readers of CounterPunch will not be surprised however. On February 8, in a piece by this reporter, Counterpunch exposed the fact that the company that Davis claimed to work for in the US, Hyperion Protective Services, LLC, of Orlando Florida, was a fraud--the address on the business cards that Davis was carrying when arrested we traced to a vacant storefront in a run-down and nearly empty strip mall in Orlando. The store front had been vacant since 2009, according to the owner of the property.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02082011.html (see below)
I would suggest, however, that this story is not over yet. It may well be that while Davis is a contractor for the CIA, he could also be something else: a still active-duty member of US Special Forces. One of the items found on him by arresting police was an ID card identifying him as a DOD (Department of Defense) contractor. See below:
Davis reportedly spent 10 years in US Special Forces until allegedly leaving in 2003, but apparently it has become increasingly common for the US to use Special Forces personnel in countries all over the world who are "off the books" in terms of being registered as active duty at the Pentagon, with records of their service being maintained only at the unit level. The thing is, while it is commonplace in the international diplomatic world for embassies to give diplomatic cover to members of their intelligence services, giving active-duty military personnel diplomatic such "cover" would be a grave violation of international diplomatic protocol.
And since, as I have reported in my own newspaper, This Can’t Be Happening, local Pakistani politics make it unlikely that the ruse of trying to call him an embassy employee, rather than a Lahore Consulate employee will work with the Pakistan court, it could be the US government has decided now to fall back to claiming he's CIA, which would probably at least spare him a hanging, even if it leaves him with a long jail sentence in a Lahore prison.
My main reasoning for thinking Davis is in Special Forces is that CIA agents don’t typically advertise themselves as being in the “security” business. Yet Davis was carrying cards when he was arrested after slaughtering two Pakistanis that identified him as an employee of Hyperion Protective Services, LLC. That kind of thing may well by what a secret Special Forces commando might do, but not a CIA agent.
Furthermore, the kind of killing that Davis was involved in--the daylight execution on a crowded street of two young men on motorcycles, and the equipment police found in his car, which included multiple semi-automatic pistols and high-capacity clips, a telescope, a forehead-mounted infra-red flashlight, multiple cell-phones, a cell-phone locater, clippers, military knives, makeup and masks and a camera filled with photos of schools (common targets for bombings in Lahore and other Pakistani cities)--sound dirtier than the typical CIA fare.
Two things clear already though. One is that the US is a thoroughly untrustworthy member of the international diplomatic community. It has shown that, from the President on down, it is ready to bald-facedly lie to its own allies to cover up its nefarious activities, which well could include fomenting terror within their borders. The other is that the US media are nothing more than propaganda mouthpieces for that same wretched government, ready to help it cover up its crimes when asked.
Dave Lindorff is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, an independent, collectively-owned, journalist-run, reader-backed online alternative newspaper. His work, and that of John Grant, Linn Washington Jr., ., and Charles M. Young , can be found at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02222011.html
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February 8, 2011 - DAVE LINDORFF
A CounterPunch Special Report
The Deepening Mystery of Raymond Davis and Two Slain Pakistani Motorcyclists
The mystery of American Raymond A. Davis, currently imprisoned in the custody of local police in Lahore, Pakistan and charged with the Jan. 27 murder of two young men, whom he allegedly shot eight times with pinpoint accuracy through his car windshield, is growing increasingly murky. Also growing is the anger among Pakistanis that the US is trying to spring him from a Punjab jail by claiming diplomatic immunity. On Feb. 4, there were massive demonstrations, especially in Lahore, demanding that Davis be held for trial, an indication of the level of public anger at talk of granting him immunity.
Davis (whose identity was first denied and later confirmed by the US Embassy in Islamabad), and the embassy have claimed that he was hired as an employee of a US security company called Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC, which was said to be located at 5100 North Lane in Orlando, Florida. Business cards for Hyperion were found on Davis by arresting officers.
However CounterPunch has investigated and discovered the following information:
First, there is not and never has been any such company located at the 5100 North Lane address. It is only an empty storefront, with empty shelves along one wall and an empty counter on the opposite wall, with just a lone used Coke cup sitting on it. A leasing agency sign is on the window. A receptionist at the IB Green & Associates rental agency located in Leesburg, Florida, said that her agency, which handles the property, part of a desolate-looking strip mall of mostly empty storefronts, has never leased to a Hyperion Protective Consultants. She added, “In fact, until recently, we had for several years occupied that address ourselves.”
The Florida Secretary of State’s office, meanwhile, which requires all Florida companies, including LLSs (limited liability partnerships), to register, has no record, current or lapsed, of a Hyperion Protective Consultants, LLC, and there is only one company with the name Hyperion registered at all in the state. It is Hyperion Communications, a company based in W. Palm Beach, that has no connection with Davis or with security-related activities.
The non-existent Hyperion Protective Consultants does have a website ( http://www.hyperion-protective.com), but one of the phone numbers listed doesn’t work, an 800 number produces a recorded answer offering information about how to deal with or fend off bank foreclosures, and a third number with an Orlando exchange goes to a recording giving Hyperion’s corporate name and asking the caller to leave a message. Efforts to contact anyone on that line were unsuccessful. The local phone company says there is no public listing for Hyperion Protective Consultants--a rather unusual situation for a legitimate business operation.
Pakistani journalists have been speculating that Davis is either a CIA agent or is working as a contractor for some private mercenary firm--possibly Xe, the reincarnation of Blackwater. They are not alone in their suspicions. Jeff Stein, writing in the Washington Post on January 27, suggested after interviewing Fred Burton, a veteran of the State Department’s counter-terrorism Security Service, that Davis may have been involved in intelligence activity, either as a CIA employee under embassy cover or as a contract worker at the time of the shootings. Burton, who currently works with Stratfor, an Austin, TX-based “global intelligence” firm, even speculates that the shootings may have been a “spy meeting gone awry,” and not, as US Embassy and State Department officials are claiming, a case of an attempted robbery or car-jacking.
Even the information about what actually transpired is sketchy at this point. American media reports have Davis driving in Mozang, a busy commercial section of Lahore, and being approached by two threatening men on motorcycles. The US says he fired in self-defense, through his windshield with his Beretta pistol, remarkably hitting both men four times and killing both. He then exited his car and photographed both victims with his cell phone, before being arrested by local Lahore police. Davis, 36, reportedly a former Special Forces officer, was promptly jailed on two counts of murder, and despite protests by the US Embassy and the State Department that he is a “consular official” responsible for “security,” he continues to be held pending trial.
What has not been reported in the US media, but which reporter Shaukat Qadir of the Pakistani Express Tribune, says has been stated by Lahore police authorities, is that the two dead motorcyclists were each shot two times, “probably the fatal shots,” in the back by Davis. They were also both shot twice from the front. Such ballistics don’t mesh nicely with a protestation of self-defense.
Also left unmentioned in the US media is what else was found in Davis’ possession. Lahore police say that in addition to the Beretta he was still holding, and three cell phones retrieved from his pockets, they found a loaded Glock pistol in his car, along with three full magazines, and a “small telescope.” Again, heavy arms for a consular security officer not even in the act of guarding any embassy personnel, and what’s with the telescope? Also unmentioned in US accounts: his car was not an embassy vehicle, but was a local rental car.
American news reports say that a “consular vehicle” sped to Davis’ aid after the shooting incident and killed another motorcyclist enroute, before speeding away. The driver of that car is being sought by Lahore prosecutors but has not been identified or produced by US Embassy officials. According to Lahore police, however, the car in question, rather than coming to Davis’s aid, actually had been accompanying Davis’s sedan, and when the shooting happened, it “sped away,” killing the third motorcyclist as it raced off. Again a substantially different story that raises more questions about what this drive into the Mozang district was all about.
Davis has so far not said why he was driving, heavily armed, without anyone else in his vehicle, in a private rental car in a business section of Lahore where foreign embassy staff would not normally be seen. He is reportedly remaining silent and is leaving all statements to the US Embassy.
The US claim that Davis has diplomatic immunity hinges first and foremost on whether he is actually a “functionary” of the consulate. According to Lahore police investigators, he was arrested carrying a regular US passport, which had a business visa, not a diplomatic visa. The US reportedly only later supplied a diplomatic passport carrying a diplomatic visa that had been obtained not in the US before his departure, but in Islamabad, the country’s capital.
(Note: It is not unusual, though it is not publicly advertised, for the US State Department to issue duplicate passports to certain Americans. When I was working for Business Week magazine in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, and was dispatched often into China on reporting assignments, my bureau chief advised me that I could take a letter signed by her to the US Consulate in Hong Kong and request a second passport. One would be used exclusively to enter China posing as a tourist. The other would be used for going in officially as a journalist. The reason for this subterfuge, which was supported by the State Department, was that once Chinese visa officials have spotted a Chinese “journalist” visa stamped in a passport, they would never again allow that person to enter the country without first obtaining such a visa. The problem is that a journalist visa places strict limits on a reporter’s independent travel and access to sources. As a tourist, however, the same reporter could – illegally -- travel freely and report without being accompanied by meddling foreign affairs office “handlers.”)
Considerable US pressure is currently being brought to bear on the Pakistani national government to hand over Davis to the US, and the country’s Interior Minister yesterday issued a statement accepting that Davis was a consular official as claimed by the US. But Punjab state authorities are not cooperating, and so far the national government is saying it is up to local authorities and the courts to decide whether his alleged crime of murder would, even if he is a legitimate consular employee, override a claim of diplomatic immunity.
Under Pakistani law, only actual consular functionaries, not service workers at embassy and consulate, have diplomatic status. Furthermore, no immunity would apply in the case of “serious” crimes--and certainly murder is as serious as it gets.
The US media have been uncritically quoting the State Department as saying that Pakistan is “violating” the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963 by holding Davis in jail on murder charges. Those reporters should check the actual document.
Section II, Article 41 of the treaty, in its first paragraph regarding the “Personal inviolability of consular officers,” states:
“Consular officers shall not be liable to arrest or detention pending trial, except in the case of a grave crime and pursuant to a decision by the competent judicial authority.”
In other words, the prosecutorial, police and judicial authorities in Lahore and the state of Punjab are doing exactly what they are supposed to do in holding Davis on murder charges, pending a judicial determination concerning whether or not he can properly claim diplomatic immunity.
The US claim that Pakistan is violating the convention is simply nonsense.
There is also the matter of double standards. The US routinely violates the Vienna Diplomatic Accord that governs international diplomatic rights. For example, the same convention requires countries that arrest, jail and prosecute foreigners for crimes to promptly notify the person’s home country embassy, and to grant that embassy the right to provide legal counsel. Yet the US has arrested, charged with murder, and executed many foreign nationals without ever notifying their embassies of their legal jeopardy, and has, on a number of occasions, even gone ahead with executions after a convict’s home country has learned of the situation and requested a stay and a retrial with an embassy-provided defense attorney. The US, in 1997, also prosecuted, over the objections of the government of Georgia, a Georgian embassy diplomat charged with the murder of a 16-year-old girl.
Apparently diplomatic immunity has more to do with the relative power of the government in question and of the embassy in question than with the simple words in a treaty.
It remains to be seen whether Davis will ever actually stand trial in Pakistan. The US is pushing hard in Islamabad for his release. On the other hand, his arrest and detention, and the pressure by the US Embassy to spring him, are leading to an outpouring of rage among Pakistanis at a very volatile time, with the Middle East facing a wave of popular uprisings against US-backed autocracies, and with Pakistan itself, increasingly a powder keg, being bombed by US rocket-firing pilotless drone aircraft.
Some Pakistani publications, meanwhile, are speculating that Davis, beyond simple spying, may have been involved in subversive activities in the country, possibly linked to the wave of terror bombings that have been destabilizing the central government. They note that both of the slain motorcyclists (the third dead man appears to have been an innocent victim of the incident) were themselves armed with pistols, though neither had apparently drawn his weapon.
A State Department official, contacted by Counterpunch, refused to provide any details about the nature of Davis’ employment, or to offer an explanation for Hyperion Protective Consultants LLC’s fictitious address, and its lack of registration with the Florida Secretary of State’s office.
Davis is currently scheduled for a court date on Feb. 11 to consider the issue of whether or not he has immunity from prosecution.
Dave Lindorff, a frequent contributor to Counterpunch, is the founder of the online alternative newspaper ThisCantBeHappening! at http://www.thiscantbehappening.net
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02082011.html
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http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/sites/default/files/images/DavisDODID.jpg
This Dept. of Defense Contractor ID found on Davis belies his "diplomat" claim, but also raises questions about whether he's really CIA, or something else
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Raymond+Davis&aq=f
Real Story of Raymond Davis shooting incident at Lahore Pakistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bawvgruO5t4&feature=related
American Consulate Car hits Ibad ur Rehman-CCTV Footage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVfMLxUU_JQ&feature=fvsr
John Kerry Press Conference on on Raymond Davis Case-1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LPyh8sqQ7U&feature=related
Drone attacks stepped up in Pakistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7MMxnN6KKY&playnext=1&list=PL775AC783D6F53A3E
Should Obama Continue Drone Attacks In Pakistan? - Hamad Mir
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRby1IDACB8&feature=related
Hillary Clinton on Pakistan - Part - 1 & 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wErT7vcezfg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24XSCEAwySg&feature=related
Release Raymond Davis: Clinton tells Zardari
http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-release-raymond-davis-clinton-tells-zardari/20110208.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/raymond-davis-case-president-barack-obama-urges-pakistan/story?id=12922282
J. Tapper & L. Ferran - Feb. 15, 2011
President Barack Obama: Pakistan Should Honor Immunity for 'Our Diplomat'
'Technical Advisor' Raymond Davis Detained After Deadly Shooting, Sen. Kerry Says DOJ Will Investigate If Released
| | Raymond Davis Had Taliban Links: Pak Media | PTI - 24.02.2011 07:04
February 22, 2011 "NDTV" -- Press Trust of India
Raymond Davis Had Taliban Links: Pak Media
Islamabad: American official Raymond Davis, arrested for double murder, had "close links" with Taliban and was "instrumental" in recruiting youths for it, the Pakistani media claimed today, close on the heels of reports in the US that he was a CIA agent tracking movements of terror groups like the LeT.
The "close ties" of 37-year-old Davis, arrested in Lahore on January 27 for killing two men he claimed were trying to rob him, with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan came out during investigations, 'The Express Tribune' reported quoting an unnamed senior official of Punjab Police.
"Davis was instrumental in recruiting young people from Punjab for the Taliban to fuel the bloody insurgency (in Pakistan)," the official said.
The report came a day after The New York Times, citing US government officials, said that Davis "was part of a covert, CIA-led team of operatives conducting surveillance on militant groups deep inside the country."
Among the groups that Davis was keeping an eye on was the banned Lashker-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, the New York Times said.
The Express Tribune quoting unnamed sources said that call records retrieved from mobile phones found on Davis had allegedly established his links with 33 Pakistanis, including 27 militants from the banned Taliban and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
The report claimed Davis was "said to be working on a plan to give credence to the American notion that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are not safe."
"For this purpose, he was setting up a group of the Taliban which would do his bidding," it said.
Davis' job was to trace the links of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in different parts of Pakistan but instead investigators found that he had developed "close links" with the Taliban, the report said quoting a source.
Investigators had reportedly recovered 158 items from Davis, including a 9mm Glock pistol, 75 bullets, a GPS device, an infrared torch, a wireless set, two mobile phones, a digital camera, a survival kit, five ATM cards and Pakistani and US currency. The camera allegedly had photographs of Pakistani defence installations.
Intelligence officials claimed these items proved that Davis was involved in "activities detrimental to Pakistan's national interests."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27541.htm
| | The CIA's Killing Spree in Lahore & R. Davis | Mike Whitney - 24.02.2011 21:16
February 24, 2011 - MIKE WHITNEY
The Case Against Raymond Davis
The CIA's Killing Spree in Lahore
When CIA-agent Raymond Davis gunned down two Pakistani civilians in broad daylight on a crowded street in Lahore, he probably never imagined that the entire Washington establishment would spring to his defense. But that's precisely what happened. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mike Mullen, John Kerry, Leon Panetta and a number of other US bigwigs have all made appeals on Davis's behalf. None of these stalwart defenders of "the rule of law" have shown a speck of interest in justice for the victims or of even allowing the investigation to go forward so they could know what really happened. Oh, no. What Clinton and the rest want, is to see their man Davis packed onto the next plane to Langley so he can play shoot-'em-up someplace else in the world.
Does Clinton know that after Davis shot his victims 5 times in the back, he calmly strode back to his car, grabbed his camera, and photographed the dead bodies? Does she know that the two so-called "diplomats" who came to his rescue in a Land Rover (which killed a passerby) have been secretly spirited out of the country so they won't have to appear in court? Does she know that the families of the victims are now being threatened and attacked to keep them from testifying against Davis? Here's a clip from Thursday's edition of The Nation":
"Three armed men forcibly gave poisonous pills to Muhammad Sarwar, the uncle of Shumaila Kanwal, the widow of Fahim shot dead by Raymond Davis, after barging into his house in Rasool Nagar, Chak Jhumra.
Sarwar was rushed to Allied Hospital in critical condition where doctors were trying to save his life till early Thursday morning. The brother of Muhammad Sarwar told The Nation that three armed men forced their entry into the house after breaking the windowpane of one of the rooms. When they broke the glass, Muhammad Sarwar came out. The outlaws started beating him up.
The other family members, including women and children, coming out for his rescue, were taken hostage and beaten up. The three outlaws then took everyone hostage at gunpoint and forced poisonous pills down Sarwar's throat." ("Shumaila's uncle forced to take poisonous pills", The Nation)
Good show, Hillary. We're all about the rule of law in the good old USA.
But why all the intrigue and arm-twisting? Why has the State Department invoked the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to make its case that Davis is entitled to diplomatic immunity? If Davis is innocent, then he has nothing to worry about, right? Why not let the trial go forward and stop reinforcing the widely-held belief that Davis is a vital cog in the US's clandestine operations in Pakistan?
The truth is that Davis had been photographing sensitive installations and madrassas for some time, the kind of intelligence gathering that spies do when scouting-out prospective targets. Also, he'd been in close contact with members of terrorist organizations, which suggests a link between the CIA and terrorist incidents in Pakistan. Here's an excerpt from Wednesday's The Express Tribune:
"His cell phone has revealed contacts with two ancillaries of al Qaeda in Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan (TTP) and sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which has led to the public conclusion that he was behind terrorism committed against Pakistan's security personnel and its people ....This will strike people as America in cahoots with the Taliban and al Qaeda against the state of Pakistan targeting, as one official opined, Pakistan's nuclear installations." ("Raymond Davis: The plot thickens, The Express Tribune)
"Al Qaeda"? The CIA is working with "ancillaries of al Qaeda in Pakistan"? No wonder the US media has been keeping a wrap on this story for so long.
Naturally, most Pakistanis now believe that the US is colluding with terrorists to spread instability, weaken the state, and increase its power in the region. But isn't that America's M.O. everywhere?
Also, many people noticed that US drone attacks suddenly stopped as soon as Davis was arrested. Was that a coincidence? Not likely. Davis was probably getting coordinates from his new buddies in the tribal hinterland and then passing them along to the Pentagon. The drone bombings are extremely unpopular in Pakistan. More then 1400 people have been killed since August 2008, and most of them have been civilians.
And, there's more. This is from (Pakistan's) The Nation:
"A local lawyer has moved a petition in the court of Additional District and Sessions ... contending that the accused (Davis)... was preparing a map of sensitive places in Pakistan through the GPS system installed in his car. He added that mobile phone sims, lethal weapons, and videos camera were recovered from the murder accused on January 27, 2011." ("Davis mapped Pakistan targets court told", The Nation)
So, Davis's GPS chip was being used to identify targets for drone attacks in the tribal region. Most likely, he was being assisted on the other end by recruits or members of the Tehreek-e-Taliban.
A lot of extravagant claims have been made about what Davis was up to, much of which is probably just speculation. One report which appeared on ANI news service is particularly dire, but produces little evidence to support its claims. Here's an excerpt:
"Double murder-accused US official Raymond Davis has been found in possession of top-secret CIA documents, which point to him or the feared American Task Force 373 (TF373) operating in the region, providing Al-Qaeda terrorists with "nuclear fissile material" and "biological agents," according to a report.
Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is warning that the situation on the sub-continent has turned "grave" as it appears that open warfare is about to break out between Pakistan and the United States, The European Union Times reports.....The most ominous point in this SVR report is "Pakistan's ISI stating that top-secret CIA documents found in Davis's possession point to his, and/or TF373, providing to al Qaeda terrorists "nuclear fissile material" and "biological agents", which they claim are to be used against the United States itself in order to ignite an all-out war in order to re-establish the West's hegemony over a Global economy that is warned is just months away from collapse," the paper added. ("CIA Spy Davis was giving nuclear bomb material to Al Qaeda, says report", ANI)
Although there's no way to prove that this is false, it seems like a bit of a stretch. But that doesn't mean that what Davis was up to shouldn't be taken seriously. Quite the contrary. If Davis was working with Tehreek-e-Taliban, (as alleged in many reports) then we can assume that the war on terror is basically a ruse to advance a broader imperial agenda. According to Sify News, the president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, believes this to be the case. Here's an excerpt:
"Zalmay Khalilzad, the former US envoy to Afghanistan, once brushed off Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari's claim, that the US was "arranging" the (suicide) attacks by Pakistani Taliban inside his country, as 'madness', and was of the view that both Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who believed in this US conspiracy theory, were "dysfunctional" leaders.
The account of Zardari's claim about the US' hand in the attacks has been elaborately reproduced by US journalist Bob Woodward, on Page 116 of his famous book 'Obama's Wars,' The News reported.
Woodward's account goes like this: "One evening during the trilateral summit (in Washington, between Obama, Karzai and Zardari) Zardari had dinner with Zalmay Khalilzad, the 58-year-old former US ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the UN, during the Bush presidency.
"Zardari dropped his diplomatic guard. He suggested that one of the two countries was arranging the attacks by the Pakistani Taliban inside his country: India or the US. Zardari didn't think India could be that clever, but the US could. Karzai had told him the US was behind the attacks, confirming the claims made by the Pakistani ISI."
"Mr President," Khalilzad said, "what would we gain from doing this? You explain the logic to me."
"This was a plot to destabilize Pakistan, Zardari hypothesized, so that the US could invade and seize its nuclear weapons. He could not explain the rapid expansion in violence otherwise. And the CIA had not pursued the leaders of the Pakistani Taliban, a group known as Tehreek-e-Taliban or TTP that had attacked the government. TTP was also blamed for the assassination of Zardari's wife, Benazir Bhutto." ("Pakistan President says CIA Involved in Plot to Destabilize Country and Seize Nukes", Sify News)
Zardari's claim will sound familiar to those who followed events in Iraq. Many people are convinced that the only rational explanation for the wave of bombings directed at civilians, was that the violence was caused by those groups who stood to gain from a civil war.
And who might that be?
Despite the Obama administration's efforts to derail the investigation, the case against Davis is going forward. Whether he is punished or not is irrelevant. This isn't about Davis anyway. It's a question of whether the US is working hand-in-hand with the very organizations that it publicly condemns in order to advance its global agenda. If that's the case, then the war on terror is a fraud.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state and can be reached at  fergiewhitney@msn.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney02242011.html
| | Task Force 373 | Wiki-P - 24.02.2011 21:40
Task Force 373 is a joint military commando unit active in the War in Afghanistan.
The unit became prominent when the clandestine operations of the unit were brought into the public domain by the release of the Afghan War Diary on Wikileaks on 25 July 2010[1]. It has been claimed that the unit is stationed at Camp Marmal, the German field base in Mazar-e-Sharif.[2]
The leaked information shows that Task Force 373 uses at least three bases in Afghanistan, in Kabul, Kandahar and Khost. Although it works alongside special forces from Afghanistan and other coalition nations, it appears to be drawing its troops primarily from the U.S. Special Forces, among others the 7th Special Forces Group, 160th SOAR, Navy SEALs, & MARSOC Marines. It is loosely based on the JSOC task forces such as Task Force 121, Task Force 145, Task Force 20, Task Force 6-26, and Task Force 88.[3]
[edit]Operations
It has been reported that this unit's mission is to "deactivate" suspected senior Taliban, by either killing or capturing them.[2] During certain missions prisoners have been taken, information contained in The War Logs includes at least 62 instances of detainee transfers where the source of the detainee is stated as being "TF 373".
In an article datelined 25 July 2010, the online guardian.co.uk news daily reported that "In many cases, the unit has set out to seize a target for internment, but in others it has simply killed them without attempting to capture. The logs reveal that TF 373 has also killed civilian men, women and children and even Afghan police officers who have strayed into its path." [4] The newspaper report also stated that "Details of more than 2,000 senior figures from the Taliban and al-Qaida are held on a "kill or capture" list, known as JPEL, the joint prioritised/zed effects list."[1] Secrecy of operations is a major concern of TF 373 and often operations are not discussed even after the fact with coalition allies. Allegations of extrajudicial killing have raised questions about the legality of the operations.[1]
The New York Times confirmed the existence of TF 373 and its work in connection with a kill or capture list but gave a lower number, "about 70," for the number of targets on the list. "These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment."[5]
[edit]
References
1]^ a b c Davies, Nick (25 July 2010). "Afghanistan war logs: Task Force 373 – special forces hunting top Taliban". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 July 2010.
2]^ a b Gebauer, Matthias; Goetz, John; Hoyng, Hans; Koelbl, Susanne; Rosenbach, Marcel; Schmitz, Gregor Peter (26 July 2010). "US Elite Unit Could Create Political Fallout for Berlin". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 27 July 2010.
3]^ 'Afghanistan war logs: Task Force 373 – special forces hunting top Taliban' http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2010/07/25/afghanistan-war-logs-task-force-373-special-forces-hunting-top-taliban.html
4]^ Fantz, Ashley; Lister, Tim (26 July 2010). "WikiLeaks shines spotlight on mysterious Task Force 373". CNN. Retrieved 22 February 2011.
5]^ C. J. Chivers, Carlotta Gall, Andrew W. Lehren, Mark Mazzetti, Jane Perlez, and Eric Schmitt, Jacob Harris, Alan McLean (25 July 2010). "View Is Bleaker Than Official Portrayal of War in Afghanistan". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 July 2010.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_373
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