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CIA man in Islamabad leaves as 'ISI exposes his identity'

WASHINGTON: The Central Intelligence Agency's top clandestine officer in Islamabad was pulled from the country on Thursday amid an escalating war of recriminations between American and Pakistani spies, with some American officials convinced that the officer's cover was deliberately blown by Pakistan's military intelligence agency. The CIA officer hastily left Pakistan on the same day that an Obama administration review of the Afghanistan war concluded that the war could not be won without greater cooperation from Islamabad in rooting out militants in Pakistan's western mountains. On Thursday and Friday, the United States appeared to make good on promises to expand its own efforts to attack the militants, with drone strikes hitting Khyber agency in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas. Most drone strikes this year have targeted North Waziristan, and attacks on Khyber in recent years have been rare. Pakistani government officials said at least 26 militants were killed in the most recent attacks. The outing of the CIA station chief is tied to the spy agency's campaign of drone strikes, which are very unpopular in Pakistan, although the government has given its tacit approval for them. American officials said that the CIA station chief had received a number of death threats after he was named publicly in a legal complaint sent to Pakistani police this week by the family of victims of an earlier drone strike. The officials said there is strong suspicion that operatives of Pakistan's powerful spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, had a hand in revealing the CIA officer's identity — possibly in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in Brooklyn last month implicating the ISI chief in the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008. The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not immediately provide details to support their suspicions. A senior Pakistani official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Pakistani government "believes that the suit in New York does not have a sound legal basis, and is based on conjecture. We did not need to retaliate." "As far as the Government of Pakistan and the ISI are concerned," he said, "we look forward to working with the Americans in securing the world from transnational threats, especially the shared threat of terrorism." The Associated Press was the first to report Friday that the station chief had left the country. The intensifying mistrust between the CIA and ISI, two uneasy but co-dependent allies, could hardly come at a worse time. The Obama administration relies on Pakistan's support for the armed drone program, which this year has launched a record number of strikes in North Waziristan against terror suspects. "We will continue to help strengthen Pakistani capacity to root out terrorists," President Obama said on Thursday. "Nevertheless, progress has not come fast enough. So we will continue to insist to Pakistani leaders that terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with." Michael J. Morell, the CIA's deputy director, met with Pakistani officials in Islamabad on Thursday, but American officials said his visit was not the result of the station chief's case. The relationship between the spy services has often frayed in recent years. American officials believe that ISI officers helped plan the deadly July 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, as well as provided support to Lashkar-e-Taiba militants who carried out the Mumbai attacks later that year. The lawsuit filed in Brooklyn last month, brought by families of American victims of the Mumbai attacks, names the ISI chief, Lt Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, as being complicit in the terror attacks. The legal complaint in Pakistan that named the CIA station chief, who was working undercover and whose name is classified, was filed on Monday over an attack late last year that killed at least four Pakistanis. The complaint sought police help in keeping the station chief in the country until a lawsuit could be filed. The agent's name had already been revealed in a news conference last month by Mirza Shahzad Akbar, the lawyer who filed the complaint this week, and the name had been reported in local media. Akbar said in an interview that he did not believe security was the reason for the CIA agent's leaving. "Obviously, his name had come out in the open and maybe he feared police action or an action by the Supreme Court," Akbar said. But an American intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the threats against the station chief "were of such a serious nature that it would be imprudent not to act," George Little, a CIA spokesman, would not confirm that the station chief had to leave Pakistan, but did say that "station chiefs routinely encounter major risk as they work to keep America safe," and that "their security is obviously a top priority for the CIA, especially when there's an imminent threat." Akbar, who said the case would continue despite the station chief's absence, is representing Kareem Khan, a resident of North Waziristan who claimed that his son and brother were killed in the drone strike last year. The complaint also named Leon Panetta, the CIA director, and defense secretary Robert M. Gates. Khan, a resident of Mir Ali in North Waziristan, is seeking $500 million as compensation for the deaths, accusing the CIA officer of running a clandestine spying operation out of the United States embassy in Islamabad. He also alleged that the CIA officer was in the country on a business passport. "My brother and son were innocent," Khan had said in a recent interview. "There were no Taliban hiding in my house." Western and Pakistani intelligence officials said the attack also killed Haji Omer, a top commander allied closely allied with the Haqqani militant network and al-Qaida. For several years, drone attacks have been a regular element of American tactics to counter militants in Pakistan's tribal areas, but the number of such strikes has increased markedly this year. The attack on Thursday struck the remote Terah valley in the Khyber region along the Afghan border where Pakistani militants have been taking refuge. At least some of the fighters appear to have fled to escape recent Pakistani military operations in the Swat, Orakzai, and South Waziristan tribal regions, as well as less remote areas of Khyber. There were three more strikes in the same area on Friday, a government official said. The area is home to Lashkar-e-Islami, a militant organization that recently allied with the Pakistani Taliban, but which has often clashed with other groups. As it published its year-end review of its Afghan war strategy on Thursday, the Obama administration indicated that it planned to step up attacks on al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents in the area. That would mean using Predator and Reaper drones in Pakistan's tribal areas, and possibly carrying out Special Forces operations along the border, officials indicated. Two British converts to Islam appeared to be among those killed in drone attacks in recent days, officials in North Waziristan said on Friday. Two officials, a senior civilian Pakistani official based in Peshawar and a security official, who both spoke in return for anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters, said the Britons were believed to have assumed Islamic names — Abu Bakar, said to be his late 40s, and Mansoor in his mid-20s — after their conversion to Islam in Britain a few years ago. The British Foreign Office said diplomats were aware of the reports and were trying to confirm them. The report was the second in recent months suggesting the presence of some foreigners among militants fighting American forces in the border area. In July, American forces in Afghanistan detained a German citizen, Ahmed Sidiqi, 36, said to have ties to the men who helped plot the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Then in October, Pakistani officials said that several German citizens were killed in a drone strike in Pakistan. Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan. Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, Alan Cowell from Paris, and J. David Goodman from New York.

                                                                                                               
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