Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Arrest of CIA Agent Sheds Light on American Covert War in Pakistan, Straining U.S.-Pakistani Relations

Find the Amy Goodman interview with the Correspondent reporting from Pakistan

U.S. officials have (finally) admitted clearly that an American detained in Pakistan for the murder of two men was a CIA agent and a former employee of the private security firm Blackwater, now called Xe Services.

Declan Walsh has been reporting from Pakistan and Afghanistan and is the author of the new book, Insh’Allah Nation: The Crisis of Modern Pakistan.

Find this article on Huffingtonpost here where comments and tweets are starting to come in - including this one "Raymond Davis may be the Eugene Hasenfus of the war in Afghanista­n. Just the tip of the iceberg. Hasenfus' crash and detainment blew the lid off the Iran-Contr­a affair." See also at this site other related articles including one from The New York Times.

Text: U.S. officials have admitted an American detained in Pakistan for the murder of two men was a CIA agent and a former employee of the private security firm Blackwater, now called Xe Services. Up until Monday, the Obama administration had insisted Raymond Davis was a diplomat who had acted in self-defense. The arrest of Davis has soured relations between the United States and Pakistan and revealed a web of covert U.S. operations inside the country, part of a secret war run by the C.I.A. The Guardian of London first reported Davis’s CIA link on Sunday and noted that many U.S. news outlets knew about his connection to the CIA but did not report on it at the request of U.S. officials. We speak with Declan Walsh, the Pakistan correspondent for The Guardian, who first broke the story. [includes rush transcript]

Find the original posting link to Democracy Now! (with a three part transcript of interview and audio available here

Find this article also featured on Huffingtonpost here

December 02, 2010, Jeremy Scahill (author of -Blackwater-) shared the following with Democracy Now!: WikiLeaks Cables Confirm Secret U.S. War Ops in Pakistan

Despite sustained denials by the Pentagon, the leaked cables from WikiLeaks confirm that U.S. military special operations forces have been secretly working with the Pakistani military to conduct offensive operations and coordinate drone strikes in the areas near the Afghan border. A U.S. embassy cable from October of 2009 states: "These deployments are highly politically sensitive because of widely-held concerns among the public about Pakistani sovereignty and opposition to allowing foreign military forces to operate in any fashion on Pakistani soil.” The cables confirm aspects of a story about the covert U.S. war in Pakistan published in The Nation magazine last year by investigative journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill.

Find this earlier item from Scahill here

Declan Walsh | guardian.co.uk
Declan Walsh is the Guardian's foreign correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
www.guardian.co.uk/profile/declanwalsh

Declan Walsh (declanwalsh) is on Twitter. Sign up for Twitter to follow Declan Walsh (declanwalsh) and get their latest updates.
twitter.com/declanwalsh or GO here

Find a progression of items from Pakistan, World and US news on this Raymond Davis case here at oneheartforpeace blogsite and on the blogsite nomorecrusades as well.

2 comments:

CN said...

Earlier stories for reference

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
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/21/raymond-davis-pakistan-cia-blackwater

Pakistan defiant in face of US pressure to free CIA agent
Raymond Davis's immunity to be decided next month as PM asserts Pakistani sovereignty and dignity over murder case
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/21/raymond-davis-cia-agent-pakistan

CN said...

To see how strained the two nations relating are and to understand this more deeply, it's crucial to read Op Ed by Pakistanis:

Davis Case Has Thrown Overboard America's Rules On Terrorism

By Asif Haroon Raja

In USA if a person tortures a dog he is sent to jail, but a government functionary indulging in torture against fellow beings is ignored.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27546.htm

US Kills 14 People In Pakistan
14 killed in drone, missile attacks in SWA, NWA

By Pakistan Tribune

The villagers claimed all the victims were local tribes people and had no affiliation with the militants.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27545.htm

==
Raymond Davis Had Taliban Links: Pak Media

By Press Trust of India

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.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27541.htm

===
Raymond Davis, The CIA and Pakistan
The NYT's Journalistic Obedience

By Glenn Greenwald

The NYT knew about Davis' work for the CIA (and Blackwater) but concealed it because the U.S. Government told it to. Now that The Guardian and other foreign papers reported it, the U.S. Government gave permission to the NYT to report this, so now that they have government license, they do so.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27539.htm
===