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THINK TANK: SENIOR
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After presiding over bin Laden raid, CIA chief in Pakistan came home suspecting he was poisoned by ISI
The hunt for Osama bin Laden: For almost a decade, U.S. intelligence officials were stymied by Osama bin Laden. That is until CIA analysts at Langley changed their focus to the al-Qaeda leader's secret courier network. (The Washington Post)
By Greg Miller May 5 at 12:56 PM
Two months after Osama bin Laden was killed, the CIA’s top operative in Pakistan was pulled out of the country in an abrupt move vaguely attributed to health concerns and his strained relationship with Islamabad.
In reality, the CIA station chief was so violently ill that he was often doubled over in pain, current and former U.S. officials said. Trips out of the country for treatment proved futile. And the cause of his ailment was so mysterious, the officials said, that both he and the agency began to suspect that he had been poisoned.
Mark Kelton retired from the CIA, and his health has recovered after he had abdominal surgery. But agency officials continue to think that it is plausible — if not provable — that Kelton’s sudden illness was somehow orchestrated by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI.
The disclosure is a disturbing postscript to the sequence of events surrounding the bin Laden operation five years ago and adds new intrigue to a counterterrorism partnership that has often been consumed by conspiracy theories.
That 2011 time frame was marked by extraordinary turbulence in the United States’ relationship with Pakistan, a wary alliance that was close to collapse when U.S. Navy SEALs descended on the al-Qaeda leader’s compound in Abbottabad.
Rare photos show Osama bin Laden while hiding in Tora Bora
View Photos
Photos have been released of the Tora Bora compound where the al-Qaeda leader lived until a Western bombing campaign forced him to flee.
Even if the poisoning suspicion is groundless, the idea that the CIA and its station chief considered the ISI capable of such an act suggests that the breakdown in trust was even worse than widely assumed.
[CIA tweets U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden — five years later]
Kelton, 59, declined multiple requests for an interview, but in a brief exchange by phone he said that the cause of his illness “was never clarified,” and he added that he was not the first to suspect that he had been poisoned. “The genesis for the thoughts about that didn’t originate with me,” he said.
In the conversation, Kelton declined to answer questions about his illness or his tenure in Pakistan. “I’d rather let that whole sad episode lie,” he said. “I’m very, very proud of the people I worked with who did amazing things for their country at a very difficult time. When the true story is told, the country will be very proud of them.”
U.S. officials acknowledged that the CIA never saw proof that Kelton was poisoned or confronted Pakistan with that charge. CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said that privacy considerations “limit what we can say about any individual cases . . . but we have uncovered no evidence that Pakistani authorities poisoned a U.S. official serving in Pakistan.”
Even so, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the ISI has been linked to numerous plots against journalists, diplomats and other perceived adversaries and that the spy agency’s animosity toward Kelton was intense.
Officials said the ISI chief at the time, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, routinely refused to speak with Kelton or even utter his name, referring to the dour CIA station chief as “the cadaver.”
CIA contractor Raymond Davis, was involved in a Jason Bourne-style shootout in Lahore. Kelton signed off on dozens of drone strikes that infuriated the Pakistanis. He also presided over the final preparations for the assault in Abbottabad that killed bin Laden and, to many, exposed Pakistan’s security agencies as incompetent.
The CIA asked that Kelton not be identified by his full name. But since retiring, Kelton has posted his name and portions of his CIA résumé on publicly accessible Websites. He has not disclosed his assignment in Pakistan, but other key figures associated with the bin Laden operation have come forward over the past five years or have been publicly identified.
Pakistan dismissed the allegations against the ISI.
“Obviously the story is fictional, not worthy of comment,” said Pakistan Embassy spokesman Nadeem Hotiana. “We reject the insinuations implied in the allegations.”
U.S. officials emphasized that the relationship with Pakistan had been deteriorating for years before Kelton arrived in Islamabad.
By 2009, officials said, U.S. intelligence agencies had evidence that the ISI was complicit in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, suspected the ISI of staging raids to disguise the deaths of militants killed in custody and were convinced that the ISI routinely tipped off its proxies when they were about to be struck by CIA drones.
The strain intensified in 2010 when the CIA sharply escalated the pace of its drone campaign and Pasha was named in a Mumbai-attack-related lawsuit in the United States. In apparent retaliation, a suit filed in Pakistan by alleged victims of a drone strike revealed the name of the CIA’s then-station chief, Jonathan Bank.
Concerned for Bank’s safety, the CIA employed a modest ruse to get him out of the country, former officials said. As then-CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell finished a series of scheduled meetings in Islamabad, Bank escorted his boss to a waiting agency plane. Then, without any notice to Pakistani authorities and in violation of protocol, Bank stayed aboard as the flight crew closed the door.
The next station chief would face a doubly daunting assignment — managing the toxic relationship with the ISI while secretly pursuing the most promising lead in more than a decade on bin Laden’s whereabouts.
Kelton, known as having an acerbic personality, was not an obvious candidate for the role. He had little experience with counterterrorism operations and had spent much of his career in traditional Cold War outposts, including Moscow, where the CIA remained locked in a decades-long duel with the KGB and its successor organization.
[How the CIA ran a ‘billion dollar spy’ in Moscow]
But given the increasingly tense atmosphere in Islamabad, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and others concluded that years of engaging in adversarial espionage could be an asset. “They thought his Moscow experience was a very good credential,” said a former senior CIA official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss agency operations and personnel.
Former U.S. officials who worked alongside Kelton said he began preaching “Moscow Rules” upon arrival, meaning that the ISI should be treated as a determined foe rather than a problematic partner. The inevitable clash came sooner than either side expected.
Less than 48 hours after Kelton’s arrival in Islamabad, Davis, the CIA contractor, was arrested after opening fire on two armed Pakistani men accused of trying to rob him. In Davis’s car, authorities found a conspicuous collection of spy gear, reportedly including a disguise kit, an infrared flashlight and a camera.
[CIA’s Global Response Staff emerges from the shadows]
Some in the U.S. Embassy argued that lying about Davis would only insult the Pakistanis, who might be persuaded to release him if the agency acknowledged the blunder. But Kelton and his superiors at headquarters were adamantly opposed.
“Don’t tell them anything,” Kelton told then-U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter, according to former officials familiar with the exchange. The stonewalling continued for weeks — with President Obama demanding the release of “our diplomat” — until Munter secured permission to deal with Pasha directly and admit Davis’s ties to the CIA.
Davis was released March 16 after a secret court proceeding in which the families of those killed were paid $2.4 million. The CIA’s drones, which had gone dormant during much of Davis’s captivity, roared back to life the next day, carrying out a strike that killed at least 40 people at a tribal council meeting in Datta Khel.
Pasha was livid, sending word to Munter that the strike amounted to a “kick in the teeth” after the Davis deal was arranged. Pasha’s relationship with Kelton never recovered, and the two rarely spoke in the ensuing months.
In a recent interview, Munter described 2011 as “by far my most difficult year in the Foreign Service.” Attempts to reach Pasha through the Pakistan Embassy in the United States were unsuccessful.
The hunt for Osama bin Laden: For almost a decade, U.S. intelligence officials were stymied by Osama bin Laden. That is until CIA analysts at Langley changed their focus to the al-Qaeda leader's secret courier network. (The Washington Post)
By Greg Miller May 5 at 12:56 PM
Two months after Osama bin Laden was killed, the CIA’s top operative in Pakistan was pulled out of the country in an abrupt move vaguely attributed to health concerns and his strained relationship with Islamabad.
In reality, the CIA station chief was so violently ill that he was often doubled over in pain, current and former U.S. officials said. Trips out of the country for treatment proved futile. And the cause of his ailment was so mysterious, the officials said, that both he and the agency began to suspect that he had been poisoned.
Mark Kelton retired from the CIA, and his health has recovered after he had abdominal surgery. But agency officials continue to think that it is plausible — if not provable — that Kelton’s sudden illness was somehow orchestrated by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as the ISI.
The disclosure is a disturbing postscript to the sequence of events surrounding the bin Laden operation five years ago and adds new intrigue to a counterterrorism partnership that has often been consumed by conspiracy theories.
That 2011 time frame was marked by extraordinary turbulence in the United States’ relationship with Pakistan, a wary alliance that was close to collapse when U.S. Navy SEALs descended on the al-Qaeda leader’s compound in Abbottabad.
Rare photos show Osama bin Laden while hiding in Tora Bora
View Photos
Photos have been released of the Tora Bora compound where the al-Qaeda leader lived until a Western bombing campaign forced him to flee.
Even if the poisoning suspicion is groundless, the idea that the CIA and its station chief considered the ISI capable of such an act suggests that the breakdown in trust was even worse than widely assumed.
[CIA tweets U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden — five years later]
Kelton, 59, declined multiple requests for an interview, but in a brief exchange by phone he said that the cause of his illness “was never clarified,” and he added that he was not the first to suspect that he had been poisoned. “The genesis for the thoughts about that didn’t originate with me,” he said.
In the conversation, Kelton declined to answer questions about his illness or his tenure in Pakistan. “I’d rather let that whole sad episode lie,” he said. “I’m very, very proud of the people I worked with who did amazing things for their country at a very difficult time. When the true story is told, the country will be very proud of them.”
U.S. officials acknowledged that the CIA never saw proof that Kelton was poisoned or confronted Pakistan with that charge. CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said that privacy considerations “limit what we can say about any individual cases . . . but we have uncovered no evidence that Pakistani authorities poisoned a U.S. official serving in Pakistan.”
Even so, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the ISI has been linked to numerous plots against journalists, diplomats and other perceived adversaries and that the spy agency’s animosity toward Kelton was intense.
Officials said the ISI chief at the time, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, routinely refused to speak with Kelton or even utter his name, referring to the dour CIA station chief as “the cadaver.”
CIA contractor Raymond Davis, was involved in a Jason Bourne-style shootout in Lahore. Kelton signed off on dozens of drone strikes that infuriated the Pakistanis. He also presided over the final preparations for the assault in Abbottabad that killed bin Laden and, to many, exposed Pakistan’s security agencies as incompetent.
The CIA asked that Kelton not be identified by his full name. But since retiring, Kelton has posted his name and portions of his CIA résumé on publicly accessible Websites. He has not disclosed his assignment in Pakistan, but other key figures associated with the bin Laden operation have come forward over the past five years or have been publicly identified.
Pakistan dismissed the allegations against the ISI.
“Obviously the story is fictional, not worthy of comment,” said Pakistan Embassy spokesman Nadeem Hotiana. “We reject the insinuations implied in the allegations.”
U.S. officials emphasized that the relationship with Pakistan had been deteriorating for years before Kelton arrived in Islamabad.
By 2009, officials said, U.S. intelligence agencies had evidence that the ISI was complicit in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, suspected the ISI of staging raids to disguise the deaths of militants killed in custody and were convinced that the ISI routinely tipped off its proxies when they were about to be struck by CIA drones.
The strain intensified in 2010 when the CIA sharply escalated the pace of its drone campaign and Pasha was named in a Mumbai-attack-related lawsuit in the United States. In apparent retaliation, a suit filed in Pakistan by alleged victims of a drone strike revealed the name of the CIA’s then-station chief, Jonathan Bank.
Concerned for Bank’s safety, the CIA employed a modest ruse to get him out of the country, former officials said. As then-CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell finished a series of scheduled meetings in Islamabad, Bank escorted his boss to a waiting agency plane. Then, without any notice to Pakistani authorities and in violation of protocol, Bank stayed aboard as the flight crew closed the door.
The next station chief would face a doubly daunting assignment — managing the toxic relationship with the ISI while secretly pursuing the most promising lead in more than a decade on bin Laden’s whereabouts.
Kelton, known as having an acerbic personality, was not an obvious candidate for the role. He had little experience with counterterrorism operations and had spent much of his career in traditional Cold War outposts, including Moscow, where the CIA remained locked in a decades-long duel with the KGB and its successor organization.
[How the CIA ran a ‘billion dollar spy’ in Moscow]
But given the increasingly tense atmosphere in Islamabad, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and others concluded that years of engaging in adversarial espionage could be an asset. “They thought his Moscow experience was a very good credential,” said a former senior CIA official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss agency operations and personnel.
Former U.S. officials who worked alongside Kelton said he began preaching “Moscow Rules” upon arrival, meaning that the ISI should be treated as a determined foe rather than a problematic partner. The inevitable clash came sooner than either side expected.
Less than 48 hours after Kelton’s arrival in Islamabad, Davis, the CIA contractor, was arrested after opening fire on two armed Pakistani men accused of trying to rob him. In Davis’s car, authorities found a conspicuous collection of spy gear, reportedly including a disguise kit, an infrared flashlight and a camera.
[CIA’s Global Response Staff emerges from the shadows]
Some in the U.S. Embassy argued that lying about Davis would only insult the Pakistanis, who might be persuaded to release him if the agency acknowledged the blunder. But Kelton and his superiors at headquarters were adamantly opposed.
“Don’t tell them anything,” Kelton told then-U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter, according to former officials familiar with the exchange. The stonewalling continued for weeks — with President Obama demanding the release of “our diplomat” — until Munter secured permission to deal with Pasha directly and admit Davis’s ties to the CIA.
Davis was released March 16 after a secret court proceeding in which the families of those killed were paid $2.4 million. The CIA’s drones, which had gone dormant during much of Davis’s captivity, roared back to life the next day, carrying out a strike that killed at least 40 people at a tribal council meeting in Datta Khel.
Pasha was livid, sending word to Munter that the strike amounted to a “kick in the teeth” after the Davis deal was arranged. Pasha’s relationship with Kelton never recovered, and the two rarely spoke in the ensuing months.
In a recent interview, Munter described 2011 as “by far my most difficult year in the Foreign Service.” Attempts to reach Pasha through the Pakistan Embassy in the United States were unsuccessful.
