http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,2763,679229,00.html"Colin Powell's statement of March 3, exonerating the ISI from any responsibility for Pearl's disappearance and murder, is shocking. Few in Pakistan believe such assurances. Musharraf was not involved, but he must know what took place. He has referred to Pearl as an "over- intrusive journalist" caught up in "intelligence games". Has he told Washington what he knows? And if so, why did Powell absolve the ISI?
The Pearl tragedy has shed some light on the darker recesses of the intelligence networks. Pearl was a gifted, independent-minded investigative journalist. On previous assignments he had established that the Sudanese pharmaceutical factory - bombed on Clinton's orders - was exactly that and not a shady installation producing biological and chemical weapons, as alleged by the White House. Subsequently, he wrote extensively on Kosovo, questioning some of the atrocity stories dished out by Nato spin-doctors to justify the war on Yugoslavia.
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Any western journalist visiting Pakistan is routinely watched and followed. The notion that Daniel Pearl, setting up contacts with extremist groups, was not being carefully monitored by the secret services is unbelievable - and nobody in Pakistan believes it.
The group which claimed to have kidnapped and killed Pearl - "The National Youth Movement for the Sovereignty of Pakistan" -
is a confection. One of its demands was unique: the resumption of F-16 sales to Pakistan. A terrorist, jihadi group which supposedly regards the current regime as treacherous is putting forward a 20-year-old demand of the military and state bureaucracy. "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1266520,00.html"
It has been rumoured that Pearl was especially interested in any role played by the US in training or backing the ISI. Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defence department whistleblower who has accompanied Edmonds in court, has stated: "It seems to me quite plausible that Pakistan was quite involved in this ... To say Pakistan is, to me, to say CIA because ... it's hard to say that the ISI knew something that the CIA had no knowledge of." Ahmed's close relations with the CIA would seem to confirm this. For years the CIA used the ISI as a conduit to pump billions of dollars into militant Islamist groups in Afghanistan, both before and after the Soviet invasion of 1979.
With CIA backing, the ISI has developed, since the early 1980s, into a parallel structure, a state within a state, with staff and informers estimated by some at 150,000. It wields enormous power over all aspects of government. The case of Ahmed confirms that parts of the ISI directly supported and financed al-Qaida, and it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA. "
The guardian reports,you decide...