The CIA has pulled its top spy out of Pakistan after terrorists threatened to kill him, current and former U.S. officials said, an unusual move for the U.S. and a complication on the front lines of the fight against al-Qaida.
An official of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s top spy organization, denied on Saturday that it was responsible for revealing the name of the Central Intelligence Agency’s top spy officer in Pakistan. “We absolutely deny this accusation, which is totally unsubstantiated and based on nothing but conjecture,” a senior ISI official said angrily in a background briefing at the headquarters of the spy organization in Islamabad.
The top C.I.A. officer in Pakistan was removed yesterday after American officials said the C.I.A. station chief had received a number of death threats since being publicly identified in a legal complaint sent to the Pakistani police this week by the family of victims of recent drone campaigns.
Could this be fallout from Wikileaks information? Did someone put two-and-two together?