Islamabad:
An official of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's top spy organization, angrily denied Saturday that it was responsible for revealing the name of the Central Intelligence Agency's top clandestine officer in Pakistan.
"We absolutely deny this accusation, which is totally unsubstantiated and based on nothing but conjecture," a senior ISI official said in a background briefing at the headquarters of the spy organization in Islamabad.
The top C.I.A. officer in Pakistan hastily left the country on Thursday after receiving death threats since being publicly identified in a legal complaint, American officials said. The complaint was filed by the family of victims of the American drone campaign in Pakistan's tribal areas; overseeing the program would fall to the station chief.
Some American officials had said they strongly suspected that operatives of Pakistan's spy service had a hand in revealing the C.I.A. officer's identity before the legal complaint was filed, possibly in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in Brooklyn last month implicating the ISI chief in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008. The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not provide details to support their suspicions.
Addressing those suspicions, published Saturday in The New York Times, the ISI official said: "This organization has immense tolerance. We have cooperated to the hilt despite constant allegations leveled against us."
The official said that the article seemed "intended to create rifts between the ISI and CIA".
In the briefing Saturday, Pakistani officials said that the ISI had an excellent working relationship with the CIA. "It has never communicated to us that they have doubts on our sincerity and credibility," one official said. "Such accusations and insinuations only appear in media."
The agencies' relationship has often been troubled in recent years. American officials believe that ISI officers helped plan the deadly bombing of the Indian Embassyin Afghanistan in 2008.
"We absolutely deny this accusation, which is totally unsubstantiated and based on nothing but conjecture," a senior ISI official said in a background briefing at the headquarters of the spy organization in Islamabad.
The top C.I.A. officer in Pakistan hastily left the country on Thursday after receiving death threats since being publicly identified in a legal complaint, American officials said. The complaint was filed by the family of victims of the American drone campaign in Pakistan's tribal areas; overseeing the program would fall to the station chief.
Some American officials had said they strongly suspected that operatives of Pakistan's spy service had a hand in revealing the C.I.A. officer's identity before the legal complaint was filed, possibly in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in Brooklyn last month implicating the ISI chief in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, in 2008. The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not provide details to support their suspicions.
Addressing those suspicions, published Saturday in The New York Times, the ISI official said: "This organization has immense tolerance. We have cooperated to the hilt despite constant allegations leveled against us."
The official said that the article seemed "intended to create rifts between the ISI and CIA".
In the briefing Saturday, Pakistani officials said that the ISI had an excellent working relationship with the CIA. "It has never communicated to us that they have doubts on our sincerity and credibility," one official said. "Such accusations and insinuations only appear in media."
The agencies' relationship has often been troubled in recent years. American officials believe that ISI officers helped plan the deadly bombing of the Indian Embassyin Afghanistan in 2008.
