How the CIA exploits catastrophes for espionage!

The Atlantic reported today on the CIA's exploitation of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan to send spies to the country. Of course, this could be a model for the agency's work elsewhere in the world, there must be a price to be paid in return for U.S. aid, to the contrary of what the United State suggests. The Lebanon Spring blog was quick to suggest links between the CIA's work in Pakistan and their activity in Lebanon, which was widely investigated by the Arab Digest. United States Aid agency must be scrutinized. Here is the Atlantic's story:

With Osama bin Laden dead, al-Qaeda's capabilities severely diminished, and the United States scaling back operations in Afghanistan, what will President Barack Obama and his successors do with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)? A look at what they've already been doing outside of war zones gives us some hints.

In 2005, for example, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake killed 75,000 people in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. After four solid years of war in the region, the United States poured relief services into Pakistan as a show of solidarity with the nominal ally in the war on terror.

The U.S. intelligence community took advantage of the chaos to spread resources of its own into the country. Using valid U.S. passports and posing as construction and aid workers, dozens of Central Intelligence Agency operatives and contractors flooded in without the requisite background checks from the country's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. Al-Qaeda had reconstituted itself in the country's tribal areas, largely because of the ISI's benign neglect.

Posted in: Asia and Africa,The CIA