In a “60 Minutes” interview broadcast by CBS Sunday, Panetta reiterated that someone in the Pakistani government must have known where Osama bin Laden was hiding.

The Pentagon chief also admitted that a Pakistani doctor helped the CIA find bin Laden’s compound last year.

And he expressed concern about the doctor, who’s been arrested by Pakistani officials and charged with treason.

Leon Panetta was in charge of the CIA when Navy Seals staged their dramatic raid inside Pakistan, killing bin Laden.

Weeks later, a Pakistani doctor, Shakeel Afridi, was arrested.

Afridi may yet face treason charges after being accused of running a fake vaccination program as a way to gain access to bin Laden’s compound for the CIA. Panetta told “60 Minutes” he’s worried about how Afridi is being treated.

“This was an individual who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation,” Panetta said. “He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan, he was not in any way doing anything that would have undermined Pakistan. As a matter of fact Pakistan and the United States have a common cause here against terrorism. And for them to take this kind of action against someone who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think, it was a real mistake on their part.”

Pakistan was embarrassed by the raid and accused the US of violating its sovereignty.

Back then, anti-American sentiment was running high – one Gallup poll suggested 85 percent of Pakistanis disapproved of US leadership. It wasn’t always like that.

“I have been to America when I was a young officer. I did one of the training courses there and that was the F-16. I have some very fond memories of the people I interacted with,” said Retired Pakistani Air Force Marshall Shahad Latif.

Latif remembered the good old days when he worked side by side with American pilots, learning to fly US made warplanes. But Latif said all those years of teamwork doesn’t give Panetta a right to criticize Pakistan for how it treats Afridi – someone who Latif believes must face consequences for working for the CIA.

“What are Americans to think in a situation like this where a man who apparently helped the world get rid, helped the world get rid of Osama bin Laden is being held and accused of being a traitor in this country?” I asked him.

“This is a difficult proposition that you put up. But apparently the fact he passed information I think he does come in the bracket of a traitor,” Latif said.

Political analyst Imitaz Gul takes a similarly hard line. It doesn’t matter to Gul that Afridi’s apparent target was bin Laden – it matters that he was passing secrets to the US and withholding them from Pakistani authorities.

“You know, it’s really easy to argue against it or argue for it. But it depends who is arguing it. The Americans probably think they can probably get away with everything,” Gul said.

Gul knows American officials have lost faith in Pakistani intelligence – believing they actively cooperate with sections of the Taliban in Afghanistan. And in the “60 Minutes” interview, Panetta said that while he had no evidence, he believed that someone in the Pakistani government knew bin Laden was hiding in their country.

So, plenty of bad feelings on both sides, said Gul. And not made any better by a November cross border clash with US troops that left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead.

“These relations continue to suffer from mistrust. So as long as this perception stays, I think there will be enough reason for the Americans to be wary or suspicious of the Pakistani establishment and the Pakistani establishment on its part is suspicious of the American long term planning,” Gul said.

There have been some attempts to repair relations. US drones are reportedly flying over northern Pakistan again. And the parliament in Islamabad seems poised to reopen the border crossings for NATO supplies that were closed by Pakistan in an act of retaliation.

Still, the resentment toward America doesn’t appear to be dissipating. And that probably means the Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA bag bin Laden shouldn’t expect to get off lightly in his own country.

Former Marine Amir Mirzai Hekmati was “sentenced to death for cooperating with a hostile nation, membership of the CIA and trying to implicate Iran in terrorism,” semi-official Fars news agency said.

The 28-year-old’s US-based family say he was in Iran visiting grandparents.

The sentence comes at a time of fresh tensions between Iran and the West over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Lisa Mullins speaks with the BBC’s Mohsen Asgari about the case.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Today, the United States urged Iran to release Amir Hekmati. He’s a 28-year-old American of Iranian descent and he’s been sentenced to death in Iran on charges of being a CIA agent. US officials have denied the charges and State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland did so again today.

Victoria Nuland: If it is true that he has been so sentenced we would condemn this verdict in the strongest terms, and we are working with all of our partners to convey that condemnation to the Iranian government. We’ve maintained from the beginning that the charges against him were a fabrication and we call on the Iranian government to release him immediately.

Mullins: That’s Victoria Nuland. Amir Hekmati is a former marine and a dual US and Iranian citizen. He claims he was in Iran to visit his grandmother’s, but that did not stop his trial from going forward.

Amir Hekmati: [speaking Arabic]

Mullins: Hekmati’s supposed confession was aired last month on Iranian state TV. In it he describes being part of a plot to infiltrate Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. Hekmati is the latest in a long list of US-Iranian dual citizens to face such a charge in Iran. The BBC’s Mohsen Asgari is following this case and the reaction to it in Tehran.

Mohsen Asgari: Actually, Iran has frequently accused America of sabotaging this system in the country or seeking for undermining its regime by doing some covert operational activities. So this is something very normal and usually the people in Iran don’t pay attention to these things a lot because they are obsessed with their economy problems. And they have heard a lot about the fact that some American citizens have been arrested by the Iranian system, but at the end they all have been released. In July 2009 remember that three Americans had been arrested and they had been kept in Iran for 2-1/2 years with the same accusations, but finally they were released on bail.

Mullins: So what does that say about the chances of this particular American, Amir Hekmati, being released as well?

Asgari: It’s a political thing I think because in recent weeks we have been receiving a lot of threatening messages from American officials against Iran. And they are talking about widening the sanctions on Iran’s economy. On the other side Iran has launched a military exercise and have test fired a lot of missiles at the Persian Gulf, threatening America. So this is a war of words between the two sides and this is a very risky threat I think if they want to execute this person. It is a [declaration] of war against America I think and the stake is so high potentially that no one wants it to happen.

Mullins: One other thing about that, if you’re saying you can’t separate the global politics from the individual court cases like the case against this American accused of spying, what is Iran saying is its strongest evidence that Mr. Hekmati is indeed a spy?

Asgari: Iranian system has not posted any documents yet accept the confession of Mr. Hekmati that was shown on Iran’s state TV saying that he has been deceived by the CIA to infiltrate into Iran’s security system and implicate Iran in terror reason. This is the whole document that we have heard so far. But their point is that Iran is trying to increase its bargaining power in the run up to the supposedly nuclear talks because Iran has at the same time sent a letter to 5-plus-1 countries to pave the ground for a fresh round of nuclear talks. By means of these things Iran is trying to increase its bargaining power.

Mullins: All right, Mohsen Asgari, thank you.

Asgari: You’re welcome.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: Amir Hekmati was tried and sentenced in Tehran as an Iranian citizen, but he’s also an American citizen, born to Iranian parents in Arizona and raised here in the US. Hadi Ghaemi has been in touch with Hekmati’s family. Ghaemi runs the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. He is based in New York.

Hadi Ghaemi: The family are in total shock at the news and they don’t know anymore than what the media has reported so far, and particularly given that Iranian judiciary has not allowed them to have legal representation inside Iran. They have no contact and no more information at the moment.

Mullins: And who is he being represented by if…

Ghaemi: In the lower court there was a court-appointed lawyer, who from what we understand, practically did nothing to present the facts and launch a credible defense for Amir.

Mullins: Well, what would have been appropriate in terms of his defense?

Ghaemi: Well, any good lawyer would have asked for any incriminating evidence that based on what evidence is being charged with his membership in the CIA and doing spy work in Iran.

Mullins: Excuse me for one second, do you know if that was ever presented by the government?

Ghaemi: Yes, the government is saying because of his record in the military he has been recruited by the CIA to go there and infiltrate the Iranian Intelligence Services, which is highly unlikely scenario given Amir had never been to Iran and had no understanding or record of working on Iran issues.

Mullins: He was in the Marine Corps where he served as a translator, and what was he doing for work at the time he was in Iran?

Ghaemi: At the time we understand that he was a freelance contractor. He actually did not have any permanent job and just wanted to go visit his grandmother on the even of a major holiday.

Mullins: And did the government know this, know about his background?

Ghaemi: Yes, yes exactly, the point is that when Amir applied for his passport processing at the intersection of the Iranian government in Washington, DC, he provided all details of his military service, which goes back to 2001 up to 2005. And sought assurances from them that this is not going to cause him any trouble. And they told him it should be all fine. And actually when he arrived in the airport there was no questioning and no issues. Only two weeks after he was in Iran he was detained.

Mullins: I wonder given the language skills of Amir Hekmati and the fact that he has local connections, family there, and given his military background, does it seem to you plausible that he could be a spy?

Ghaemi: Not at all. Again, why should he go there telling the Iranian government his entire background? Why should he carry IDs showing he has had been enrolled in the US military? And knowing the Iranian Intelligence Services and government it would be extremely difficult to penetrate and make connections to provide any kind of information out of that system. It’s extremely opaque and hard to have any access to the inner workings of the Iranian government.

Mullins: What else do you know about him?

Ghaemi: From what I understand he had never been to Iran, but had a great love for the culture and the country, and his family there. And that this summer since he was in the region he decided to go and pay a visit to his grandmother. He felt like he just was making a short vacation there, but they trapped him basically.

Mullins: Do you know anything about how he is coping since he’s been imprisoned for what is it, four months now?

Ghaemi: Yeah, more than four months, August 29 is when he was detained. And no, there’s been no access to him really. The Swiss embassy that represents the American government interest in Tehran has not been allowed any access to him. The family-appointed lawyer has not been given any information or access to him. So he’s been kept in pretty much isolation and this again, is just a classic pattern of holding people in solitary confinement for months and then urging them to cooperate with interrogators to get a lenient outcome. And it always turns the other way. People who do cooperate and keep silence, the families keep silent, are always shocked to find out that all of the promises made were false. And in this case a death sentence is very shocking.

Mullins: Hadi Ghaemi of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, speaking to us from New York, thanks.

Ghaemi: Thank you, it is my pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

The night should have been a coup for Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai. Once a poor villager from halfway around the world, Fai had become the go-to man in Washington, D.C., for his cause, Kashmir, the Himalayan region long caught in a tug of war between Pakistan and India.

And there he was on March 4, 2010, hosting a fundraiser for Rep. Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who had been the chief supporter in Congress of Fai’s Kashmiri American Council for 20 years. In some ways, the event inside Fai’s home in Fairfax, Va., symbolized everything that Fai had become, featuring speeches in the living room and kebabs and curries in the basement.

But it barely camouflaged how Fai’s carefully built world was collapsing.

The FBI was monitoring almost every move Fai made, every email he sent, every call he received. Investigators believed Fai’s main donors were not well-meaning idealists but members of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, the most powerful of Pakistan’s spy agencies.

Within weeks, the Justice Department would send Fai a letter of warning. Within months, he would be pulled over by New York police with $35,000 in cash in his car. And by the next year, Fai would be arrested, the unlikely central character in a scheme by a foreign government to pay more than $4 million [1] to sway U.S. politicians and policy on Kashmir, the Justice Department says.

Fai’s tale of rags to riches to arrest this summer is a lesson in how easy it is to win influence in Washington. Fai mingled with some of America’s top politicians, meeting former President Bill Clinton and drawing as many as 32 members of Congress to his annual conference on Kashmir. Fai’s access to power illustrates an issue that could become even more significant in this election cycle: foreign money illegally coming into U.S. political campaigns.

But the case, the first known criminal prosecution of its kind, could also involve much more. It is unfolding at a particularly sour moment in the relationship between the United States and Pakistan [2], once a key ally in the war on terror. Fai’s alleged accomplice, Zaheer Ahmad, is a prominent Pakistani-American who runs one of the nicest hospitals in Pakistan. The FBI has reportedly questioned at least one person about Ahmad’s ties to a Pakistani nuclear scientist [3] who once met with Osama bin Laden.

To the Indian media, FBI and Justice Department, Fai had long denied being an agent of Pakistan. That changed the day he was arrested [4]. Then, the FBI says, he told an agent that for 15 years, the ISI had funneled money to him and directed him to attend certain conferences and even to report back on certain people.

“He was living a lie,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Kromberg said at Fai’s initial court hearing. “When he spoke to politicians, when he spoke to members of Congress, when he spoke to heads of state, he didn’t say, ‘I get my money from the ISI.’ “

A Pakistani embassy official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said allegations that Fai and Ahmad were working for the ISI were false. “The ISI has no connection with these two persons,” he said, adding that the FBI has not talked to anyone at the embassy about the investigation.

So far, Fai, 62, and Ahmad, 63, have been accused of failing to register as foreign agents, punishable by a maximum of five years in prison. Fai also has been accused of making false statements. But Ahmad, who is free in Pakistan, and Fai, released on $100,000 bond and under house arrest, may soon face other charges. A grand jury has been hearing evidence, and a recent deadline to indict the men or drop the case was extended by two months.

Typically, people at the center of such cases remain a mystery, refusing to speak about their predicament or what led up to it. Fai, a birdlike man with a sing-song voice and thinning hair combed to the side, declined to talk about the case against him. But in his only interview since his arrest, Fai offered a detailed account of his journey from being a victim of world events to, in some small way, a shaper of them. Another U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia, played a pivotal role in his transformation, he explained. Mostly, though, Fai spoke about Kashmir, which remains his focus even amid his legal troubles.

“[My wife] said, ‘You are not doing anything wrong, so you are helping your people of Kashmir,’ ” said Fai, sitting on a floral-patterned couch beneath a framed verse of the Quran. “And we know it’s not an easy job, but we have to live with it.”

***

Fai was born in 1949, just after the first war between Pakistan and India over Kashmir. India had held onto the Muslim-majority territory during its partition with Pakistan, even though Pakistan claimed it. The U.N. brokered a truce and called for a plebiscite for Kashmiris [5], which never happened. Kashmir remained split.

Fai grew up in a poor farming village [6] near poplars and rice paddies about 25 miles outside Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s state of Jammu and Kashmir. His father was an Islamic cleric.

The struggle over Kashmir consumed Fai: He listened to speeches from Pakistan on an illicit transistor radio. He waited outside for eight hours to see a leader just released from jail. By 1965, India and Pakistan were again at war over Kashmir, and Fai recalled watching his family slaughter sheep and chickens, then taking food and clothes to Pakistani soldiers hiding in the forest.

That year, at age 16, Fai married, his first wife said. The couple had two children. Both died young.

Fai attended college in Srinagar and fell in with the Jamaat-e-Islami [7], a fundamentalist South Asian Islamic group later linked to militant groups [8]. He worked as the executive assistant to the local Jamaat founder, said Syed Atiqullah Ashiq, a Jamaat colleague and friend.

In 1976, shortly after India’s prime minister declared an emergency and banned groups like Jamaat, Fai left home for a university outside Delhi and eventually for Saudi Arabia.

There, his life changed with one chance encounter in July 1980. A university dean encouraged Fai to reach out to the imam of Ka’aba2014the cleric who leads prayers at the holiest site in Islam. Fai recalled inviting the imam to a Kashmir conference sponsored by Jamaat in Srinagar. The cleric agreed. At age 31, Fai returned to Kashmir, escorting perhaps the most influential Islamic leader in the world.

Tens of thousands of people showed up to hear the imam give a series of speeches. At one point, the scene was so chaotic Fai lost a shoe.

“It really revolutionized the whole thinking of the people of Kashmir: We are not alone,” Fai recalled.

Fai and the imam of Kaaba played a pivotal role in introducing the strict Saudi vision of Islam to Kashmir, which traditionally had been more moderate, said Arif Jamal, a Pakistani journalist who has written a book on the shadow war in Kashmir and who researched Fai’s role.

After that visit, Fai left Kashmir and never returned to India. He said he had heard he would be arrested for treason. Several family members said they hadn’t heard from him since.

“No phone, no letter, nothing, no correspondence right from 1980 until now,” said Syed Ghulam Mohiuddin Habib, Fai’s half-brother.

“Ghulam Nabi never wrote to me, never sent any money,” said Peera Bano, his first wife.

Fai said he didn’t write or call because he didn’t want to endanger his family. He also said he divorced his first wife, which she denies.

By the end of 1980, Fai landed in the United States. Through the King Faisal Foundation, the Saudis agreed to pay for his schooling and living expenses, at least $50,000 a year. The Saudis even chose where he studied.

“They told me that you should go to Temple University, because one of the giants of Islamic scholarship was there; in fact, two giants,” Fai recalled.

The late Ismail Raji al-Faruqi was a professor specializing in Islam at Temple and would soon help found the International Institute of Islamic Thought. (The institute later came under investigation in a federal probe into terrorism funding [9], although no charges were filed.) Another professor, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a respected Islamic scholar, was trying to “Islamicize” the social sciences, Fai said.

At Temple, Fai became president of the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. & Canada, an organization started in part by members of the Muslim Brotherhood [10], which had spread from Egypt through the Middle East. Some branches of the Brotherhood [11] were hardline; others, more moderate.

Fai also started working for the ISI in about 1985 while at Temple, according to correspondence [12] cited by the FBI, although the affidavit does not make clear what he was doing.

After earning his doctorate in 1988, Fai joined the advisory council for the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella group started by the Muslim Students Association that also received Saudi funding.

Soon, violence bloomed again in Kashmir. The Indian military cracked down on indigenous groups. Pakistan’s ISI was blamed for sponsoring insurgent groups across the border in Kashmir.

A confidential witness allegedly told FBI agents that in 1989 the ISI picked Fai [13] to run the Kashmiri American Council because he had no overt ties to Pakistan. Similar groups were set up in London and Brussels [14], the FBI said.

Incorporation documents filed in Maryland in April 1990 show Fai was one of three people who established the Kashmir center [15]. A second founder was Rafia Syeed, the wife of Sayyid Syeed, one of the organizers of ISNA. The third founder2019s father, who retired from the Pakistani military, also held a key post in a charity [16] run by Fai2019s alleged accomplice, Zaheer Ahmad. The Syeeds did not reply to requests for comment. The third founder, Mohammad Bilal Yousaf, denied knowing Fai. 201CI have never heard of Dr. Fai before, only what2019s been reported in the media,201D he said.

IRS filings show the group got startup funds from two board members [17] and a $20,000 loan [18] from the North American Islamic Trust, an ISNA-linked group that holds titles to about 300 U.S. mosques [19], Islamic centers and schools.

Fai rented an office suite [20] about three blocks from the White House, IRS records show. The Kashmiri American Council was open for business.

Within weeks of establishing the group, Fai made his first campaign contribution, $500 to Burton. Neither man would say how they met, but Burton, who later gained fame [21] for investigating the Clintons as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was a natural friend for Fai. The congressman had just sponsored a bill [22] aiming to curtail aid to India until human-rights abuse investigations were allowed, particularly in Punjab and Kashmir. “Not even the Red Cross has been allowed access to Kashmir,” Burton announced on the House floor.

Months later, Fai invited people to the council’s first delegates meeting [23] at a Holiday Inn in Dayton, Ohio. Burton, Fai announced, had agreed to be the keynote speaker.

*******

Over the next 20 years, Fai became the face of the separatist Kashmiri cause in the United States. He never advocated publicly for Kashmir to join Pakistan, calling instead for “self-determination.”

At first, Hafiz Mohammad Sabir, now an imam of one of the largest Pakistani mosques in Brooklyn, N.Y., said he doubted Fai’s commitment to Kashmir. “On that time, believe you me, he was alone,” recalled Sabir, from the Pakistan side of Kashmir. “He cannot even come to the Kashmiri community and gather 10 Kashmiris.”

But in about 1994, when Sabir was working as a cabdriver, he spotted Fai in midtown Manhattan, lugging a large bag through more than a foot of snow. Fai was handing out fliers about Kashmir, Sabir realized. He grabbed the bag, put it in his taxi and drove Fai wherever he wanted to go. After that, Sabir said, he helped Fai however he could, bringing busloads of mosque members to conferences in Washington and helping to spearhead protests in New York.

At about the same time, Fai was making inroads with U.S. politicians [24]. In 1993, Fai wrote President Clinton about the suffering of Kashmiris, winning news coverage when Clinton wrote back. In 1996, Fai met Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole at the Republican National Convention. In 2000, he met Clinton in Chicago, just before Clinton visited India.

Fai grew particularly close to a few House Republicans. In 2002, an ally of Fai’s, Rep. Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania, helped form a congressional forum on Kashmir [25]. In an interview, Pitts said he met Fai after becoming interested in Kashmir and felt that Fai wanted Kashmiris, Indians and Pakistanis to come up with a peaceful solution together. “Dr. Fai is an old gentleman, an American citizen interested in giving back to his homeland, interested in peace and peace talks,” Pitts said.

Fai’s most significant relationship was with Dan Burton. In 2004, Fai testified in front of Burton’s subcommittee hearing [26] on human-rights abuses in Kashmir. Burton introduced him personally, saying, “I’ve known Dr. Fai for a long time.”

In 2007, Fai was given the American Spirit Medal, the highest award from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, for being committed to conservative principles.

Fai also leapt onto the world stage. He traveled to more than 40 countries, from Indonesia to Spain. Fai said he met with more than 1,000 ambassadors from around the world.

In Pakistan, he was treated like a visiting dignitary. In June 2009, Fai stayed at the best hotel in Islamabad and met the president, prime minister and foreign minister. A video from the trip showed Fai and President Asif Ali Zardari [27] sitting in white armchairs, flanking a photo of Zardari’s late wife, Benazir Bhutto.

Each year, starting in 2003, Fai co-hosted a Kashmir peace conference, usually on Capitol Hill. The 2007 conference drew Pitts, a dozen other members of Congress and various Pakistani dignitaries, as well as a handful of Indian and Indian-American human-rights activists and scholars. Fai covered the expenses of almost all the attendees who traveled to Washington.

About 20 of Fai’s guests then flew with him to Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital [28], for a one-day conference on Kashmir. They met with a group of Uruguayan generals and attended sessions that ran over familiar ground.

“[Fai] spoke about the usual things,” recalled Angana Chatterji, an Indian-American scholar who attended the event. “He has this list of dignitaries he brings up and issues like the U.N. treaties and self-determination.”

Fai paid for the group’s flights. He also covered accommodations at the Radisson, one of Montevideo’s nicer hotels, having about $13,000 wired to him to cover the tab in cash, Sabir said.

By last year, Fai was in some ways living the American dream. His second wife, whom he had met at Temple, had found a good job at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They had bought a four-bedroom brick house in the Virginia suburbs for more than $650,000. They had raised two children, one who studied at Ohio State University, the other at Stanford.

But behind the scenes, things were unraveling.

***

As far back as 1991, stories in the Indian press referred to Fai as an “agent.” The Indian embassy refused to send anyone to his conferences. Others were also suspicious: How did Fai have so much money? How could a shoestring nonprofit afford an office near the White House and a top-notch PR firm?

“I have always felt, and I know my view is widely shared by others working on the Kashmir issue in the Washington area, that Dr. Fai’s Kashmiri American Council was subsidized by the Pakistan government,” said Howard Schaffer, a former U.S. diplomat and Kashmir expert who has known Fai for about 15 years.

The Kashmiri American Council never operated like an ordinary charity, according to nonprofit experts. Money, sometimes large amounts, passed through it in unusual ways.

Several council supporters said they had donated regularly, maybe a few thousand dollars at a time, and were unaware of the ISI’s purported role in funding the group. But the FBI says the largest donations came from a group of at least 13 unnamed “straw donors,” Pakistani-American doctors and businessmen who gave cash to Fai or wrote checks to the Kashmiri American Council. Several received tax write-offs for their contributions.

Zaheer Ahmad [29], who ran Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, allegedly reimbursed the straw donors with money he received from the ISI.

At minimum, the write-offs violated U.S. tax laws, experts said. “That’s not allowed,” said Eli Bartov, a research professor of financial accounting at the Stern School of Business at New York University. “You can only get the deduction if you make the contribution.”

But there was a larger mystery.

Internal budget documents confiscated by the FBI show far more money flowing through the Kashmiri American Council than reflected in the group’s annual IRS filings. In its 2008 IRS filing [30], for example, the group reported spending $291,807, while the budget documents [31] say the amount was more than twice that much, $690,380. In 2009, the council’s reported spending [32] was $332,706, while its internal records [33] said $662,730.

So far, the government has not offered an explanation for these discrepancies. Fai did not answer questions on the matter.

Pablo Eisenberg, an expert on philanthropy and a senior fellow at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, said there could be several reasons for the conflicting information.

“One is, he wants to downsize for public consumption,” Eisenberg said of Fai. “Or … he’s taking the money to use for his own purposes, whether spending it on himself or giving it to some other organization.”

It’s also possible Fai reported money he received by check but not in cash, particularly cash transferred to him outside the United States, said Marcus Owens, the former head of the IRS unit that oversees nonprofits.

Fai’s internal budget documents spelled out plans [34] to spend $80,000 to $100,000 a year on campaign contributions to members of Congress, the FBI said.

But donations made by Fai, his associates and board members appear to fall far short of those amounts, campaign finance records show.

Fai has given $28,165 to federal candidates and political parties since 1990, including $10,290 to Burton and $9,500 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Others connected to Fai, Ahmad and the Kashmiri American Council’s board of directors donated at least $93,456 during those years, including $28,551 to Burton.

So far, the FBI has identified only $4,000 in ISI money that went into campaign contributions, from Ahmad and his nephew [35]. Pitts and Burton received $2,000 each, the FBI said.

Ultimately, the affidavit may tell only part of what the FBI was actually investigating.

Agents first learned of the case in 2005 from an informant who wanted to reduce his jail sentence. The counterterrorism division of the FBI’s Washington field office started looking into Fai2014and more troubling allegations against Ahmad.

A Pakistani-American physicist, Gul Chughtai, who specializes in cancer treatment and clashed with Ahmad while head of the cancer department at Shifa International Hospital, said he first talked to the FBI about Ahmad four years ago.

Chughtai said he met with four agents at the FBI’s Philadelphia office, including one from Washington’s counterterrorism division already investigating Ahmad. Chughtai said the agent has talked to him since, asking several times about a trip that Ahmad allegedly made to Afghanistan with an eccentric Pakistani nuclear scientist named Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood.

Mahmood and another colleague had met with Osama bin Laden [36] and Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan in August 2001, when the al-Qaida leaders had allegedly inquired about nuclear weapons. Mahmood was later placed under house arrest [37] and has been largely isolated in Islamabad since.

Chughtai, who in the 1990s had set up a MRI machine next door to Mahmood and knew that Mahmood and Ahmad were friendly, said he had heard rumors that Ahmad had once accompanied a nuclear scientist to see bin Laden but had forgotten the scientist’s name. And that was what the counterterrorism agent was most interested in.

“[He] called me and said, ‘Dr. Chughtai, I have done more research about Zaheer than anybody else. I could do a thesis,’ ” Chughtai recalled. “He wanted me to send everything possible on Shifa. I faxed and faxed. One day he called and asked about Zaheer going with a nuclear scientist to see Osama. I said, ‘I heard the story, don’t remember the guy.’ He asked if I would recognize the name. I said, ‘Maybe.’ He said, ‘Bashiruddin.’ And that was the name I remembered.”

Chughtai said the FBI agent also asked about people working in the Pakistani embassy in Washington, but he didn’t recognize any names.

An FBI official confirmed that the agent had met with Chughtai but refused to discuss the investigation. The official also verified to ProPublica that the agent who talked to Chughtai worked on the same team as Sarah Webb Linden, the FBI agent who signed the affidavit against Fai and Ahmad. The FBI requested that ProPublica not name the agent, to avoid compromising the investigation.

***

The FBI first questioned [38] Fai in 2007 but seemed to step up its scrutiny in 2010.

That March, the Justice Department sent Fai a letter [39], telling him that the Indian press had reported that he was a Pakistani agent, and if so, he needed to register with the department as a foreign agent [40]. Fai responded after several weeks, denying he was an agent of Pakistan.

Three months later, New York police pulled Fai over [41] and found $35,000 in cash in his car. Fai claimed the money was from a man identified by the FBI as “Straw Donor B.” After getting advice from Ahmad, the donor allegedly told the FBI that the money was from Sabir, the Brooklyn imam. But the cleric wasn’t even in the United States when Fai was pulled over, the FBI said. In his interview with ProPublica, Sabir identified Straw Donor B as a man in his thirties named “Akif” and called him “a stupid boy.” Sabir denied giving Akif money for Fai. ProPublica could not find Akif.

Despite the growing pressure, Fai kept traveling the world and kept asking the ISI for more money, the FBI said. Fai’s lawyers have pointed out that Fai repeatedly chose to return to the United States, despite knowing he was being watched.

To some, Fai’s behavior indicated that he believed that he was protected.

“The ISI probably told him: ‘Don’t worry, you’re taken care of, you’re part of the tacit agreement we have with the CIA,’” said Vijay Sazawal [42], who is from the Indian side of Kashmir and started a rival Kashmiri group in the United States. “He’s not stupid. I have to believe he was confident he was shielded.”

In February, Fai traveled to Pakistan, right about the time that U.S. and Pakistan relations were starting to fall apart. CIA operative Raymond Davis [43] had been arrested for allegedly shooting two men in Lahore. The arrest and fallout heightened tensions between the countries.

When Fai returned home, his luggage was searched. Customs agents found what appeared to be excerpts of a court filing [44] on Davis from the Lahore High Court. Within days, Linden, the FBI agent, visited Fai at home. She asked whether he knew anyone in the Pakistan government. Yes, he admitted. But he then suggested that none of them knew him, the FBI affidavit [45] said.

Fai also allegedly showed Linden the court filing, which had a photocopy of a photograph of Fai on the back.

Linden testified that she emailed Fai on July 13 [46], asking to meet again “to talk about the situation in Kashmir.” Fai agreed.

She showed up at Fai’s house after he returned from a trip to the United Kingdom, on the morning of July 18. Fai again denied working with the ISI.

That night, Fai went out to dinner with family and friends. After coming home, Fai or a family member called the police to report a suspicious car parked near Fai’s driveway. FBI agents were in the car.

The next morning, Fai was arrested as he drove his wife toward the subway.

Before charges against Fai and Ahmad were were publicly announced, agents fanned out across the United States, questioning about 18 men linked to Ahmad, said Shafqat Chaudhary [47], who serves on the boards of Ahmad’s hospital [48] and his U.S. charity, the Society for International Help [49]. Chaudhary, a Long Island businessman, said the FBI questioned him but declined to say what it asked him. He said he wasn’t involved in transferring money for Ahmad and had done nothing wrong. Chaudhary said none of the men questioned by the FBI had been arrested, as far as he knew.

Sabir said law-enforcement agents2014he wasn’t certain which agency they were from2014also questioned him, showing him photographs of Chaudhary, Akif and Ahmad, along with several photographs of men he didn’t know. He said he had not moved money to Fai.

In a phone conversation, Ahmad said he was free and working at Shifa. “Until this case is finished, I can’t discuss this,” Ahmad told a ProPublica reporter. “And it could be dangerous for you, too.”

Some of Fai’s supporters defended him. They pointed out that Fai was arrested the same day U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in India [50], where officials had long complained about his group. They pointed out that Kromberg, the assistant U.S. attorney on the case, has been accused of anti-Muslim bias [51]. They said they believe Fai was a victim of the chill in U.S.-Pakistan relations.

“They say that when two elephants fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled,” said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, the leader of a moderate separatist group in Kashmir who always traveled with Fai when visiting the United States. “Similarly, poor Fai has been a victim of these cross-agency wars.”

At a detention hearing on July 26, Fai’s lawyers indicated they will argue that even if Fai got money from the ISI, he didn’t follow its directions. “His message was always his own message,” said one lawyer, Khurrum Wahid, in a news conference after the hearing. “It was never the message of the Pakistani government.”

Some legal experts said the case raised questions about why the Justice Department would so aggressively pursue Fai, even asking for pretrial confinement, considering the relatively light charge. Charles Swift, a former military defense lawyer who has represented high-profile terror defendants in private practice, said he researched the registration law and could not find another case in which criminal charges had been pursued.

Even when the Irish Northern Aid Committee [52] in New York was accused of being a front for the Irish Republican Army, the group was only sued civilly and eventually forced to register. A group of 10 Russian spies [53] was charged with failing to register last year, but they were allowed to leave the country as part of a spy swap.

Several Kashmiris said they worried that the real victim in the case would be their struggle for self-determination.

“The Kashmir movement, as we talk about it in Washington, D.C., was identified with Dr. Fai,” said Mumtaz Wani, a lawyer in Washington from the Indian side of Kashmir. “And we find it’s a huge setback to us. At this stage I don’t feel that many in Congress will be willing to talk to us. Not even Dan Burton.”

Burton and Pitts announced they would donate any campaign contributions linked to Fai and Ahmad to charity. The FBI affidavit says there’s no evidence any politician knew Fai’s money had come from the ISI. “I was really stunned that he might be an agent, undisclosed and unregistered,” Pitts said. “I was shocked.”

After his arrest, Fai sat down for another interview with Linden.

This time, Fai admitted that he had been affiliated with the ISI for 15 years [54] and that no one on the Kashmiri American Council board had known the group was funded by the ISI, Kromberg said at the detention hearing. Fai also allegedly wasn’t just bankrolled by Pakistani spies. Instead, Kromberg said, Fai “agreed that the ISI directs him, Mr. Fai, to go to certain conferences and to report on certain people, including some that were mentioned in the criminal complaint.”

Fai told ProPublica he’s stopped talking to Ahmad or anyone else in Pakistan. He said he doesn’t want anyone else to get in trouble.

While under house arrest, Fai keeps working even as he reports all his meetings to the FBI. He goes to the mosque to meet friends. He edits a new 54-page paper on Kashmir, focusing on topics such as the U.N. resolution from 1949 and the visit of the imam of Kaaba in 1980. He sends out emails to the Kashmiri American Council’s mailing list, saying he will keep fighting for Kashmiris to decide their future.

“God willing!” he wrote in one. “I will continue to do that in days, weeks, months and years to come.”

Raheel Khursheed, an independent journalist based out of Srinagar, has covered Kashmir and Indian politics for more than five years. He tweets at @Raheelk [55].

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Marco Werman: The Libyan rendition controversy could complicate Libya’s relations with the US and other nations.  As we heard, Abdul Hakim Belhaj is a former member of a group that had ties to al-Qaeda.  And that raises questions about how Washington will work with him as a member of Libya’s new government.  I put them to New York Times Magazine contributing writer, James Traub, who’s been examining the Libyan transition.

James Traub: It would certainly not be a good thing if the government of Libya were controlled by members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, but that’s not the case.  There is this one guy, this one guy seems like a very interesting person who says yes, that’s who I used to be; that’s not who I am now. Now, obviously, we can’t trust that that’s the case, and in any case it certainly seems like Libya’s so-called Transitional National Council, which is the interim government, doesn’t consist of people like him at all.  If anything it consists of probably un-representatively pro-western, basically liberal minded folk who have agreed to include him in the group. Now, documents found in Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli match the story that Belhaj has told, that he was taken off a flight in Bangkok and he then says we then tortured by two CIA officials.  We don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s perfectly plausible that his claims are true. Now, why is that important?  Does that mean that when this guy says he is nevertheless willing to work with the west he’s lying because he’s filled with hatred of the west?  That would be plausible, but from all accounts and in terms of what he has said has so far been pursuing a non-Jihadist agenda.

Werman: So what then is the answer?  How does the US move forward now when one of the emerging leaders in a post-Gaddafi government says he was tortured by the CIA?

Traub: Well, so fine, so he says that and the British are now doing an inquiry, and they may very well find out that it’s true that he was tortured by the CIA.  So then the question is is the United States going to apologize?  Answer, no, it’s not going to apologize.  And is Belhaj going to be unhappy that he wasn’t apologized to?  I suppose he will, but life goes on. And so the real issue is what can the United States and other western nations do to ensure that the new government in Libya is an effective one, is a legitimate one, one that represents the Libyan people?  And there are a lot of answers to that question in terms of aid, in terms of political advice, in terms of lots of issues.  But I don’t think that this has to be a preoccupying fact.  There are much bigger sources of concern.  Are they gonna be able to form an effective government at all?  How are they going to bind together all these different freelance fighting units which have now converged on Tripoli?  These are the big questions.  I don’t think the Belhaj issue is nearly as important as that.

Werman: Right, but if Belhaj or other Islamists who have been extraordinarily rendered by the United States don’t get the apology that they want, I mean that wouldn’t be a very good start for US-Libyan relations.

Traub: Only if those guys are running the show.  I mean look, do I think that there should be an apology?  Yes.  Do I think there will be an apology?  No.  I mean in the new world that is emerging in the Middle East there will be myriad grievances against the west, because anybody who spent any time in the Middle East knows that there are deep-seeded grievances against the United States and against the West. And you have Barack Obama replace George Bush as president, it’s still going to be so.  And so this is part of the price that we have to decide we’re willing to pay in order to have a more democratic Middle East.  The alternative was to have autocratic allies who were able to suppress those voices, but in part for that very reason had very little legitimacy among their own people.

Werman: You know, last week, James Traub, I saw an interview with Dick Cheney about his forthcoming book and the word waterboarding was mentioned, and I realized I hadn’t seen that word for a while.  And now this story of Belhaj, a man from whom confessions were extracted through torture allegedly, does this put the torture to bay, to front and center again?

Traub: I wouldn’t mind if it did.  I don’t think it will, I mean it’s remarkable to me how kind of insignificant that’s been in this country.  You would think this would’ve violated our values in such a profound way.  So yes, I find it kind of appalling that there still is this stout defense of torture, and not only by Cheney, but you know, will the Belhaj case change that?  I don’t think so.  I don’t know.

Werman: James Traub’s most recent book is The Freedom Agenda.  His column, Terms of Engagement, appears each week at foreignpolicy.com.  James Traub, thank you so much.

Traub: Well, thank you.

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Marco Werman: I am Marco Werman and this is The World, the co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. ‘Extraordinary rendition’ is a phrase that’s become part of our post-9/11 lexicon. It involves high valued terrorism suspects vanishing into CIA black site prisons overseas. Now, a court case involving a billing dispute between two American aviation companies is revealing just how the rendition program worked. For one thing, the government relied on private companies to fly the detainees around, and we’re finding out where those private jets touched down. Places like Bucharest, Baku, Cairo, Djiboutii, Islamabad and Tripoli. John Radsan is a former federal prosecutor and former assistant general counsel at the CIA. He now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He says the new information fills in a lot of blanks.

John Radsan: The controversy about rendition is how many had been done under the Bush Administration, and the locations of where these people went to. And many of these countries, and we see some of those locations mentioned here, were countries that do not have a good record for protecting human rights, of treating their detainees fairly.

Werman: If the details involved reveal things about a secret government operation, how did this case between these two government contractors get to court in the first place?

Radsan: It’s a private lawsuit. There was a dispute about payment, so they filed a lawsuit there in State Court. What is more surprising to me is how this case could continue. I bet there is somebody in the Director’s office at the CIA, today or yesterday, asking the General Counsel how is it that we didn’t close down this lawsuit. I saw from the reporting that the judge in the case was surprised. He was waiting for somebody to contact him from the government because the judge had a sense that they were putting information on the public record that perhaps the United States government did not want on the record.

Werman: Like what, for example?

Radsan: The names of the contractors, the phone logs, the flight logs. This was a program that was operated largely in secrecy; removing suspected terrorists from points outside the United States to other points. The CIA went to these companies saying, “We’re going to protect your information, protect your personnel.” And this is based on the public reporting. I am not drawing on any of my experiences. The CIA is used to doing its operations in the shadows for legitimate reasons and they err on the side of not revealing information.

Werman: One company in the case said DynCorp is a government contractor that oversaw these rendition flights. Is there anything that they did that contravenes any law that you know of?

Radsan: Not that I know of, and there continues to be a debate. And this story will push along that debate about whether the convention against torture even applies to these transfers that are done outside the United States. We haven’t heard from the Obama administration on that issue as a matter of law. But we know from them that, as a matter of policy, they apply the standard of the convention against torture which is, that if there are substantial grounds for believing that the person is going to be tortured in the receiving country, you’re not allowed to transfer the person. So there is some talk that there may have been transfers that occurred under the Bush administration that violated that principle, but that principle is a matter of policy. There are still lawyers debating about whether that convention against torture applies to these transfers that are going on outside of U.S. territory.

Werman: And, will the details that have been revealed in this case now require the CIA to divulge what actually happened?

Radsan: I don’t believe so. Every bit of information that’s out there, whether it’s official or not, it makes it more difficult for the CIA to protect the lime; whatever lime they have now saying, “We can’t reveal anything because it’s classified.” So what we saw in some of the Guantanamo litigation, they were able to protect some information early on in the litigation, but as more information came out it made it more difficult for them as a matter of law or just public relations to say, “Well, we need to keep all of the secret.” I’ll give you one example. Before September 2006, it was a huge secret that we had secret prisons but, on that day, President Bush decided to reveal that we had a secret prison program. So it was his decision at that point to say that we had a secret prison program. From that point on it became more difficult to justify hiding any details. We don’t know all the details about the secret sites, but we don’t have a blanket assertion that the program is secret anymore.

Werman: John Radsan, a former federal prosecutor and a former assistant general counsel at the CIA.  He now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota. John Radsan, thanks for speaking with us.

Radsan: Thank you.

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Marco Werman: The so-called Arab Spring has seen the toppling of dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and now, Libya.  The US has by in large hailed the popular uprisings in those countries and in the Middle East.  But the former head of the CIA unit in charge of pursuing Osama bin laden says the Arab Spring has created an intelligence disaster for the US. Michael Scheuer is at home in northern Virginia.  So, Mr. Scheuer, how much intelligence had Libya under Gaddafi for example, provided the US?  Are we really gonna be that worse off intelligence-wise without Gaddafi than with him?

Michael Scheuer: Well, I think that if you look at the cables that have been published in the Wikileaks series, Gaddafi was very important intelligence service…in terms of giving us information about al-Qaeda.  And I remember when I was running operations against bin Laden, certainly one of the most active Arab services in the field working against al-Qaeda, because there was such a high number of Libyans in it, was Gaddafi’s service. We didn’t have diplomatic relations with Libya at the time, but certainly Gaddafi’s intelligence service was very much active in working against al-Qaeda.

Werman: So if you look across north Africa where these uprisings occurred and were successful — Libya, Egypt, Tunisia — how did intelligence dry up there since the beginning of the Arab Spring?

Scheuer: Well, you know, American foreign policy in the Middle East along with most of our allies, Britain and France, the whole strategy has been based on the maintenance of tyranny.  And we worked with various governments in order to maintain adequate supplies of oil at a reasonable price to protect the Israelis to try and keep some cooperative government on Israel’s borders. As that came down of course, the nature of those governments changed.  We can see it in Egypt right now letting more and more stuff go through the Gaza border to help the Palestinians attack Israel. So, what happened is our relationships with intelligence services across north Africa have changed dramatically in the sense that many of the people we dealt with have been fired.  Many have fled.  And the new people coming in are certainly not as warmly attached to the United States as their predecessors.  And the result is, at least in terms of north Africa, and probaby Yemen, and certainly in Pakistan, is that much of the work against al-Qaeda and its allies, and the Islamist movement as a whole, that was being done by the tyrants or the tyrants’ radical government, now is not being done on our behalf anymore.

Werman: Well, if you’re saying that dictatorships are good for intelligence, does that necessarily mean that democracies are going to be bad for intelligence?

Scheuer: Well, there’s no democracy coming, sir, you know that’s been portrayed by the media from extrapolating from a few folks who are smart enough to say democracy to attract western air power.  And the few people who can use Twitter and Facebook are extrapolated to represent 85 million devout Muslims in Egypt. And I’m not saying dictatorships were good for the United States.  I’m saying that’s the horse we bet on and now that it’s gone, whatever follows in its wake is going to be less friendly toward the United States, less competent, and it’s just a zero-sum game.  What we lose from the former government we have to do ourselves.

Werman: Why are so determined that there won’t be any democracy in north Africa?  I mean what leads you to believe this drought in intelligence isn’t just a matter of disorganization in these new governments?  I mean in some cases there are no governments right now.

Scheuer: The question is less what kind of government evolves in these countries than what kind of government will be acceptable to kind of secular imperialists, like Cameron and Sarkozy, and especially Mrs. Clinton, and Obama…what will they accept?  If they will accept some kind of an Islamist government that has a semblance of representation, maybe it will be fine.  But if they’re expecting anything that looks like our government then we’ll be back at war with another bunch of Arab governments.

Werman: What advice would you give the White House, Michael Scheuer, on how to get along with these governments if that’s indeed what transpires in these countries?

Scheuer: Yeah, we have to get along with governments.  You know, that’s an issue that seems to be pretty apparent to everyone.  My advice is to tell the American people the truth and that’s we’re at war with increasing numbers of Muslims and Islamists; not because of how we elect people, or freedom or women in the workplace, but because of the way we’ve intervened, our government has intervened in the Muslim world for the past 30-40 years.  And until people understand that we’re being attacked because of what the US government does, and not just because we’re Americans, we’re gonna be on the short end of the stick, sir.

Werman: Michael Scheuer is a 22 veteran of the CIA.  He ran the counterterrorist center’s Bin Laden unit in the late 1990s.  Mr. Scheuer, thank you very much for your time.

Scheuer: You’re welcome, sir, thank you.

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Madiha Tahir reports from Pakistan on the controversy surrounding the effectiveness, and legality, of US drone strikes there.

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Marco Werman: A raid in Afghanistan’s southern neighbor, Pakistan, killed Osama Bin Laden in May. The CIA suspected that the al-Qaeda chief was hiding in Abbottabad. Today the British newspaper, The Guardian, reported on one way the agency was trying to prove Bin Laden was there. The strategy involved a phony vaccination program to obtain DNA evidence from members of Bin Laden’s family. It sounds like a clever idea, but Heidi Larson at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says it could have unfortunate consequences. She studies the issue of public confidence in vaccination programs. Um, now this happened in Pakistan. Will this kind of operation undermine wider confidence in real vaccination program elsewhere, do you think?

Heidi Larson: If indeed a public health program was faked and something so essential that saves lives like vaccines was used as an entry point for this effort as important as it was it really was not, is not an appropriate way. It has huge ethical implications. It has huge, um, public trust implications. Just put yourself in the shoes of a family with very young children in some parts of the world and think about the next time someone knocks on the door and says I’m here to vaccinate your children. I don’t think it takes, um, any kind of extensive research to understand that it would definitely create a thinking twice and concern.

Werman: Elaborate for me what the most serious ethical implication is of this kind of operation.

Larson: I think it raises a huge amount of questions. The fundamental issue is about public trust and the relationship between the person getting a vaccine and the provider and the person who’s making the policies. So many of the issues around vaccine trust are about the specifics of the safety of the vaccine, but frankly, the bigger issue is about the contract, the social contract, between the government and the provider of health intervention that is saving people’s lives.

Werman: How do vaccination campaigns’ impact typically unfold? And if this story is true, would a vaccination campaign have been an obvious ruse for the CIA to grab hold of?

Larson: Normally, vaccination campaigns or vaccination programs are managed through the Ministry of Health. Vaccines can also be procured privately if they’ve passed their regulations and you can have private doctors that have them available. When it comes to a nation wide vaccination program, it’s government that regulates, manages, and often provides.

Werman: What do you expect is going to happen with vaccination campaigns in Pakistan over the coming year? Do you think there will be an immediate kind of discouraging effect from this incident?

Larson: For people going to a local clinic and going through the more normal approach to taking your child, or even if it’s for an adult, to go to their clinic and get their vaccination. When they decide to do it, it may raise concerns there, but I think the more likely context where it might have some negative impact will be on the house to house campaigns. I think in a more macro level it’s exacerbating an already difficult relationship between Pakistan and the US, but also with international vaccination programs. And I think we’ll have some potential implications there.

Werman: Heidi Larson is a senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Dr. Larson leads a team studying issues around public trust in vaccines. Thanks very much for your time.

Larson: Thanks.

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Marco Werman: I am Marco Werman, this is The World. The killing of Osama Bin Laden last month was a triumph for U.S. counter terrorism, but fallout from the incident continues to strain relations between the U.S. and Pakistan where Bin Laden was killed. Today it’s reported that five Pakistanis who helped the CIA plan the Bin Laden operation have been detained by Pakistan’s military. That’s the same institution that failed to apprehend the al-Qaeda leader or to detect the U.S. raid on his hiding place. The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool is in the town where Bin Laden was killed, Abbottabad. Aleem, who has been taken in for questioning and why?

Aleem Maqbool: Well most of the information we’re getting about the actual people who have been detained is coming from Western officials who have been briefing here. Now they say, among these five people who have been arrested in the last few days includes one man who owned the building from which the CIA observed the Bin Laden compound. And the second  they say an army major, a Pakistani army major who apparently kept records of who was coming and going to the compound and past that information on to the CIA. Now, the Pakistani army has acknowledged that there have been arrests of people suspected of informing the CIA, but they say there have been many arrests, dozens of arrests across the country over the last six weeks. But they strongly deny that anyone from within their own ranks has been detained.

Werman: And, are these individuals being accused of any crime?

Maqbool: Well, of informing a foreign spy agency, even though that spy agency, the CIA, is one which the Pakistanis are committed to working with. But this time round, certainly the Army says that the CIA went too far, the Americans went too far. They should have informed them of this operation, and that’s why they’re so angry. But there is another side to this as well, and that of course is the humiliation that that operation caused. The public here, the politicians here, the media have really had it out for the leaders of the Pakistan military. Even within the military, a lot of people have called for heads to roll.

Werman: So do Pakistanis interpret these arrests as kind of an anti-humiliation campaign?

Maqbool: Yes, I mean it’s something that they were asking for. Really, I mean it is curious Marco, that since this operation took place on the 2nd of May here in Abbottabad, that most of the discussion has not been focused on why Osama Bin Laden was here, who was supporting him; although, apparently there are investigations going on. But much more, the debate has been focused on how the Americans could have carried out this operation without Pakistani knowledge. And really lots of Pakistanis asking, because of it, for a reassessment of the relationship between Pakistan and the United States.

Werman: Now, these people who were rounded up helped make the Bin Laden operation possible. What is the U.S. doing to help those arrested?

Maqbool: Well Leon Panetta, of course, was here just a few days ago; the Director of the CIA, he was here. Apparently in those meetings, we just can’t verify it, but there are sources who say that he raised the issue. The Pakistanis apparently gave some assurances. We really don’t know, these are sources that can’t be verified. But apparently they have raised the case. And more so, they also want some answers on the other side as to why Bin Laden was here. There are, at the last count, four different official investigations to that end, here in Pakistan, but nothing is reported back so far. And we aren’t hearing really of many arrests when it comes to those who aided and abetted Osama Bin Laden.

Werman: The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool in Abbottabad. Thank you.

Maqbool: No problem.

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• Tom Rick’s blog at ForeignPolicy.com

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World.  President Obama today announced a reshuffling of his national security team.  He nominated CIA Chief, Leon Panetta to replace outgoing Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, at the Pentagon; and General David Petraeus is Obama’s pick to take over at the CIA.

Barack Obama: These are the leaders that I’ve chosen to help guide us through the difficult days ahead.  I will look to them and my entire national security team for their counsel, continuity, and unity of effort that this moment in history demands.

Werman: The U.S. military and diplomatic leadership in Afghanistan is also changing.  All these appointments will need to be confirmed by Congress.  Tom Ricks is Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, and author of several books on defense issues, including The Gamble: General Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq.  He says the move sheds some light on President Obama’s goals going forward.

Tom Ricks: I think the Panetta move, sending him to the Pentagon, is a signal that he is quite determined to bring down the defense budget.  Panetta’s background in Congress was as a pugnacious guy.  He was at one point chairman of the budget committee.  So, I think at the Pentagon what you’re seeing is Obama wants a guy who’s gonna manage a sharp decline in the defense budget and keep the lid on the place. Petraeus I know pretty well and I think it’s a bit of a puzzlement why they’re sending him over to CIA.  It’s not a natural fit, but he is a smart, hardworking guy.  I think it was time to get him out of Afghanistan.  They’ve been working him hard for years. Most people wouldn’t think of the CIA as a rest and relaxation post, but for Petraeus I think it kind of will be.  It also maybe a signal that what they want to do is bring down the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, and as they do, increase the CIA’s percentage of operations there.  So, it would be a natural fit in that way.

Werman: I mean the appointment of Petraeus is one of the most interesting ones of this shift.  He’s of course, Mr. Counter Insurgency, having helped design and implement huge changes to the way America fights its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Whereas the CIA is supposed to be about spying and intelligence.  Are we seeing a blurring of the lines here?

Ricks: We kind of are.  I think there’s a legitimate worry on the part of people like Andrew Bacevich at Boston University, that we’ve seen a militarization of foreign policy and this is then a corollary, the militarization of intelligence operations.  That said, the parallel between the two and the sense in this is what Patreaus realized is that counter insurgency is much more about intelligence than it is actually about going out and shooting military weapons. I remember what one smart company commander said to me on day in Iraq, he said, ‘I have 150 guys who pull triggers and 2 guys who to intelligence.  What I really need is the opposite — 150 guys who gather intelligence and then 2 guys who act on it and go out and pull triggers.’  So I think in that sense Petraeus understands the centrality of intelligence and I think the CIA will be very receptive to that.

Werman: As head of Central Command, General Petraeus has reportedly authorized U.S. special operations troops to collect intelligence in places like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iran, and Yemen.  All are non-war zones and outside the military’s traditional purview.  In many ways this would seem to be in competition with the CIA.  Has that won Petraeus many friends in the agency?

Ricks: Well, I’m not sure it’s so much competition as the CIA, like a lot of the U.S. military, is probably getting pretty tired for having operated at high speed for 10 years since 9/11.  A lot of people are looking for some help here.  And I think what you saw with special operators pulled in, to augment and complement and to even protect CIA operations. Don’t forget also that in Afghanistan Patraeus has played a role in overseeing the drone strikes that are being conducted frequently in Pakistan against suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.  So, he’s been working pretty closely with them in Afghanistan, and before that in Iraq for several years now.

Werman: Tom Ricks, Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security helping us get a handle on the significance of the leadership changes announced today in the President’s national security team.  Tom Ricks, thanks so much.

Ricks: You’re welcome.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

By Jeb Sharp

The United States was among those trying to dissuade Aristide from returning before Sunday’s election. His relationship with Washington has long been fraught and complicated.

Aristide rose to power in the late 1980′s because he represented hope to millions of poor Haitians who had suffered under the Duvalier dictatorship. “He concentrated unto himself the desire for change in the country,” said political scientist Robert Fatton. “And he symbolized the fight against Duvalier.”

Aristide was elected president in a landslide victory in 1990. But there was trouble ahead according to Fatton. “Aristide talks very bluntly about classes, about class struggle and about the fact that the country is really being run by an oligarchy,” said Fatton. “And that that oligarchy really now has to surrender.”

Aristide proved too threatening to Haiti’s most powerful. The Army overthrew him before a year was out. The CIA had ties to the coup leaders but officially, the United States denounced the move. Margaret Tutwiler was spokeswoman at the State Department at the time. “The United States strongly condemns the removal of President Aristide,” said Tutwiler. “We call for the immediate restoration of Haiti’s legitimate, democratically-elected government.”

Aristide moved to Washington to lobby for his own return. The Bush Administration and Organization of American States imposed sanctions after the coup. The next president, Bill Clinton, ramped up the pressure. In 1994, the UN Security Council endorsed the use of military force to restore Aristide to power and he went home accompanied by a US-led multinational force. James Dobbins was President Clinton’s special envoy to Haiti at the time. “We flew back to Haiti together,” said Dobbins. “There was a huge crowd at the airport, and an even huger crowd at the national palace. There was just an ecstatic reception.”

But once he’d been restored to power, Aristide’s relationship with the US began to sour. “I think the Clinton Administration was very disappointed in his behavior once he was in office,” said Dobbins. “And with his inability to mend relations with other elements of his society and carry through on the reform program that we thought he had committed to.”

Aristide’s relations with his own supporters began to sour too. Some of them didn’t like the economic deals he’d made with Washington. And Robert Fatton says Aristide was still focused on the movement he created, whereas others wanted to get serious about creating a political party and political institutions. “Aristide didn’t like that,” said Fatton. “He was all about the movement without a clear program. And that generated tensions.”

Aristide’s term ended in 1996 but he was re-elected in 2000. This time though, there were questions about the election. And, Aristide faced fresh hostility from Washington where the Republicans were back in power. James Dobbins says the Republicans during the 1990’s were much more sceptical of Aristide than Clinton and the Democrats had been. “In many ways their scepticism proved justified,” said Dobbins. “He certainly had a much more confrontational relationship with the US government during his second full term of office.”

This time around when tensions reached a boiling point and armed rebels advanced on the capital, the international community withdrew its support. Aristide accused the United States of kidnapping him in 2004. James Dobbins says that’s not quite right. “I don’t think he was kidnapped. I think he was pressured to leave,” said Dobbins. “We didn’t threaten him. We simply told him he couldn’t expect us to protect him.”

According to Robert Fatton, Aristide was besieged in the end–by the international community, by conservative forces inside Haiti, and even by people who had once supported him. “The tragedy of the Aristide movement is that at one point they had a historic opportunity to change the country and change it utterly but that chance ultimately wasn’t seized,” said Fatton.

Which is why Aristide has returned to a Haiti where his vision of a more prosperous and equal society has yet to materialize. Download MP3

• Haiti marks earthquake anniversary

• Globalsecurity.org: Pakistan’s anger at U.S. drone strikes growing
• BBC: US criticized in Pakistan drone report
• Wikileaks: new insights into America’s drone war
• Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict

Read the Transcript
The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: It was a violent day today in Pakistan’s volatile northwest. In one town a suicide attacker drove a vehicle that was packed with explosives into a hospital for Shiite Muslims. At least 10 people were killed. And in North Waziristan, Pakistani officials said missiles fired by a US drone hit a house and a vehicle, killing at least 4 suspected militants. Drones are unmanned aircraft that are remotely controlled by pilots, who are usually here in the United States. The use of drones allows American forces to target militants without placing troops on the ground. But drone attacks have also led to a number of civilian casualties. And now 15 Pakistanis are suing the CIA over allegations that US drone strikes killed their relatives. There was a protest today in Islamabad to bring attention to the lawsuit. The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool was there. He says the protest was organized by an attorney for the plaintiffs.

Aleem Maqbool: What the lawyer is saying who’s representing them, is that the CIA leading the bombing of this area, is like a civilian getting on the plane from the states, coming over to Pakistan, killing somebody and then heading back to the states. Those were his words. So he sees it as murder. He’s representing 15 people in a class action. All of them have lost relatives in these drone strikes and he described to me, what some of these people’s stories were.

Lawyer: There’s one person who has lost both his legs and one eye. He’s a seventh grade student. There’s another person who is come. He’s a child. I have to find out a legal way how I sue on his behalf.

Maqbool: Now the action is at a very early stage. It is in the high court and I should say that the CIA has issued a statement saying, its counter terrorism operations are precise, lawful and effective.

Mullins: What are some of the other accusations that this attorney is making against the United States?

Maqbool: He’s saying essentially that even if they are targeting militants, that it is something that shouldn’t be going on. But I have to say, it’s not just about the United States. A lot of those people protesting are also angry with their own government. They are saying, look. How can the CIA be bombing the tribal areas of Pakistan, if they didn’t have permission from the Pakistani army and the Pakistani authorities? And in fact, interestingly, over the last week or so, perhaps something that a lot of Pakistani suspected was shown in some of these Wikileaks. There was one comment by the Prime Minister in which he said, look, we’ll go to Parliament and say that we don’t approve of these drone strikes but then we’ll ignore them. So he said very much what as I say, a lot of people here suspected. That while they protest and publicly say they don’t want America bombing on Pakistani territory, behind the scenes they support this policy.

Mullins: Is there a feeling in the Pakistani government that they need to cooperate with United States? Or at least look the other way as the US is conducting these drone strikes, which have increased under the Obama administration, because the government itself of Pakistan doesn’t want to be seen as fighting the Taliban, fighting some of their own people.

Maqbool: Oh, absolutely. They want to distance themselves as much as possible from this policy because of exactly that. Ultimately, a lot of those that are killed in these drone strikes are Pakistani citizens. But there is an alternative and that’s one that America is pushing for. And that is for the Pakistani army itself, to go into these areas with a ground offensive. Again, the Pakistani army is reluctant to do that for all kinds of reasons. Some say they are unwilling to do that because they don’t want to make enemies of the Taliban. Others say it’s simply because they don’t have the resources and they’d get a very bloody nose if they did a ground offensive in North Waziristan. But whatever the reason, the Pakistani authorities are reluctant to carry out that ground offensive. And while that carries on, it seems that the strategy of carrying out drone attacks is set to continue. In fact there have been some this week, even in the last few hours, in which more people have been killed.

Mullins: Aleem, do you know what it’s like to be in the tribal areas when there is a drone strike?

Maqbool: I mean, we’ve had descriptions from people there. I spent quite a while in Northwest Pakistan and basically although we can’t get to the tribal areas, some people from there can get in or out. They say that they don’t like to gather in large groups anymore in case they look from the skies as being a group of militants. Some say they were always looking up in the skies wondering when the next drone attack was going to happen.

Mullins: The BBC’s Aleem Maqbool speaking to us from Islamabad, Pakistan. Aleem, thank you very much.

Maqbool: My pleasure.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

One of the prickly bits of information made public by the leaked diplomatic cables is the discord between the US and Pakistan. The relationship has long been a delicate one. It’s made more so by controversial American drone attacks.

The US uses remotely-piloted drone aircraft to go after terror suspects in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan.

The cables confirmed that Pakistani officials condone the attacks in private while opposing them in public. Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations says the pace of the drone attacks has picked up under in recent years.

“It’s turned from what was a very special and probably highly reserved tactic to one that is now almost a staple of US counterterrorism efforts,” Markey said. “As such we probably need to start asking some bigger questions about it.”

P.W. Singer agrees with Markey that drones deserve more scrutiny. He’s written a book about the military robotics revolution called “Wired for War.”

“Something that was viewed as just science fiction is now the new normal of war,” Singer said. “We’re seeing massive use of unmanned aerial systems.”

Singer says future combat aircraft will not have pilots in them. He says there’s not a single US aerospace company that’s building a manned combat system in terms of research and development right now.

Everything in research and development is unmanned (piloted remotely). Singer points out that the technology is advancing far more quickly than the human ability to grapple with the consequences — that’s as true for robotic airplanes as it is for computers.

If Wikileaks is pushing legal and political boundaries so is drone warfare according to Singer.

“We haven’t declared war in terms of our operations in Pakistan but we’ve carried out over 200 air strikes there.” Singer said. “Congress hasn’t even held a single hearing on it to say they support it or they’re against it.”

Singer has no doubt some of the strikes on terrorism suspects are justified but he worries some of them are not, that killing becomes too easy when the person pulling the trigger is thousands of miles from the battlefield.

He’s not the only one. Critics have long complained that the drone strikes result in too many civilian casualties, and may in fact backfire by angering and alienating local populations.

But Military analyst John Pike of www.globalsecurity.org has a different view.

“What’s the alternative?” Pike asked. “That we want to make it more difficult to kill the enemy? That we want to put our soldiers into a fair fight with the enemy?”

That is perhaps the most powerful attraction of the drones for US policy makers — that they keep the pressure on the enemy while keeping US forces out of harms way.
Download MP3

Wired.com: Everybody wants drones

On The World:
• The drone war in Pakistan
• America’s third war
• Military analyst Noah Shachtman on the drone war