Scapegoating The Pakistani ISI

Jon Gold
5/7/2011

After Osama Bin Laden's death on 5/1/2011, many people in Government and in the media have questioned whether or not the Pakistani ISI was involved in harboring or protecting Osama Bin Laden.

Matt Taibbi writes, "he lived half a mile from a military academy, in a giant walled compound eight times the size of adjacent properties. He burned his trash, instead of putting it out like everyone else. When local kids kicked their ball over his wall, a guy would come out to give them money for a new one, rather than let them in. What more of a tip-off did Pakistani intelligence need?!"

Macleans reports that John Kerry "complained that not only did Pakistani intelligence fail to look for bin Laden, but for years fed the U.S. what he called "misdirects"—false information—such as "the notion that he’s out in the western part of the country and they can’t control that and so forth." Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate armed services committee, called on Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to "follow through and ask some very tough questions of his own military and his own intelligence. They’ve got a lot of explaining to do." For his part, the Pakistani president issued a personal defence: "Some in the U.S. press have suggested that Pakistan lacked vitality in its pursuit of terrorism, or worse yet that we were disingenuous and actually protected the terrorists we claimed to be pursuing. Such baseless speculation may make exciting cable news, but it doesn’t reflect fact," Zardari wrote in the Washington Post."

CIA Director Leon Panetta said that the Pakistani ISI was "involved or incompetent. Neither place is a good place to be."

The Associated Press reported that "Congress may consider cutting the almost $1.3 billion in annual aid to Pakistan if it turns out the Islamabad government knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday."

After 9/11, many allegations of the Pakistani ISI's involvement in the attacks surfaced. After a decade of barely receiving any funds from the United States, Pakistan was declared our ally in the "War On Terror," given billions of dollars, and the Pakistani ISI's involvement in the 9/11 attacks was covered up. It seems the media has helped with that cover up.

Since around 2009, the United States Government has slowly started to acknowledge the Pakistani ISI's role with terrorism. Many are acting as though this is a new revelation.

Here is an article from the Times of India in 2001 that says, "despite continuing revelations about islamabad's complicity in terrorist activity, the United States continues to shield Pakistan from terrorism charges in the hope it will turn a new leaf, with the Western media readily toeing the official line. the latest disclosures came at a Congressional hearing on Wednesday at which US intelligence analysts not only spoke about Pakistan's official role in fomenting and bankrolling terrorism but also addressed the connections between the Taliban and terrorism in Kashmir."

There is nothing new about it. I think the hypocrisy of calling out the Pakistani ISI now, after rewarding them and covering up their involvement in the 9/11 attacks, should be recognized by everyone. Should the ISI's role with terrorism be looked at and dealt with? Of course. But so should the U.S.'s support and usage of that "terror nexus."

Speaking of hypocrisy, one of the most dangerous men in the world, Dick Cheney, is living within a mile of CIA Headquarters. Are they harboring or protecting him?