Document: US increases spying operation on Pakistan
Iran Press TV
Tue Sep 3, 2013 4:2AM GMT
The United States has increased its spying operation on Pakistan, a US regional ally, according to top-secret budget documents.
In a series of revelations that have put the US intelligence community under a spotlight, The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the CIA has expanded its effort to gather intelligence on Pakistan in a bid to address US concerns about “biological and chemical sites” in the Asian country.
The operation was also seeking “to assess the loyalties of counterterrorism sources recruited by the CIA,” the newspaper said citing the 178-page summary of the US intelligence community’s “black budget.”
“Pakistan appears at the top of charts listing critical US intelligence gaps. It is named as a target of newly formed analytic cells. And fears about the security of its nuclear program are so pervasive that a budget section on containing the spread of illicit weapons divides the world into two categories: Pakistan and everybody else,” the Post said.
The disclosures are based on documents provided to the American paper by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who first leaked US surveillance programs in June and subsequently fled to Hong Kong and then Russia, where he remains after being granted temporary asylum.
Washington has given Islamabad $26 billion in aid over the past 12 years, seeking the Pakistani support in its war against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.
The CIA spying operation exposes broad new levels of distrust between the two allies.
“If the Americans are expanding their surveillance capabilities, it can only mean one thing,” the Post quoted Husain Haqqani, who until 2011 served as Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, as saying. “The mistrust now exceeds the trust.”
US spy services also carried out 231 “offensive cyber-operations” in 2011 alone, targeting Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, according to the documents.
The United States has built an “intelligence-gathering colossus” with a whopping “black budget” of $52.6 billion for the current fiscal year.
ARA/ARA
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