The CIA and its partner in Islamabad, the ISI, are trapped in a very complicated marriage. From The New York Times:
Washington: As they complete their training at “The Farm,” the Central Intelligence Agency’s base in the Virginia tidewater, young agency recruits are taught a lesson they are expected never to forget during assignments overseas: there is no such thing as a friendly intelligence service.
Foreign spy services, even those of America’s closest allies, will try to manipulate you. So you had better learn how to manipulate them back.
But most CIA veterans agree that no relationship between the spy agency and a foreign intelligence service is quite as byzantine, or as maddening, as that between the CIA and Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI.
[Photo: Pakistan’s new army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, (with Pervez Musharraf, left) used to run the ISI.]
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The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most necessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.AdamSmithAdam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 1776