In the murky arena of spy-vs.-spy, it's hard to establish anything definitively, and in Pakistan, things can be even more murky. Some elements of the Pakistani government and military establishment seem to back US actions in the country, perhaps wanting the US military and economic aid offered in return for granting access to the CIA and turning a blind eye to the drone attacks. But for whatever reason, it seems that Pakistan's powerful ISI is fighting back against American incursions on Pakistani soil by disrupting the US intelligence apparatus there.
News Blackout in America
Whatever the domestic and international politics it is transparently evident that there is widespread Pakistani frustration and anger over the CIA's in-country operation -- at least to everyone but Americans.
US media organizations, from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press to CNN and the major broadcast networks, have refrained from mentioning the names of the outed station chiefs, leaving that kind of journalism to the likes of FireDogLake, the media review Extra! and TCBH! Such reticence seems curious, indeed. Both the Times and the Pos t, after all, had no hesitation about publishing the name of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent outed in 2003 by Vice President Dick Cheney and his deputy I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in retaliation for her husband's efforts to block President Bush's plan to invade Iraq. And her outing reportedly led to the exposure of many of her contacts, particularly in the Middle East, where they were undoubtedly put at great risk.
If the goal in the Pakistani agent outings was to protect the agents' safety, the implication would have to be that the US media are not afraid of what foreigners would do, but instead what American citizens might do--since Americans are the only ones who are being kept in the dark about who these people are.
One explanation for corporate journalism's timidity might be the Espionage Act and the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which make publication of classified documents or the identity of an undercover CIA agent a felony. After all, the Times and Post knew the Bush/Cheney administration wasn't going to go after them for publicly identifying Plame as a CIA agent. The Bush administration, clearly, wanted her outed. But could they be sure the Obama administration would not use these repressive acts against them for publishing Osth's name -- even though it was already widely known? Given the Obama administration's obsession with secrecy, and its prosecutorial zeal in going after security leaks, as absurd as it sounds, anything is possible.
As Jim Naureckas, editor of the media review magazine Extra!, put it in the latest case:,
Osth's name is no longer a secret; not only did the Pakistani party put it up on the Internet, it's been reported by numerous regional news outlets (e.g., The Hindu--11/27/13--an Indian paper that boasts a daily circulation of 1.5 million). What's more, Osth was publicly identified as a leading CIA officer years ago...
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