The Naked Truth In A Confused World

By Joseph Fitsanakis

A British and a Pakistani newspaper have confirmed that an American diplomat, who is being held in Pakistan for killing two armed men in Lahore, is in reality an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency.

On January 25, former US Special Forces member Raymond Allen Davis (note: this may not be his real name) used an unregistered Glock semi-automatic pistol to shoot dead two passengers on a motorcycle, who he says tried to assault him while he was driving his car in Pakistan’s second largest city. Witnesses say Davis shot dead the one of the two men by firing ten shots from inside his vehicle, before stepping outside to shoot the second man as he was running away from the scene of the crime. Pakistani authorities say Davis’ claim to self-defense is discredited by the fact that the second man’s body was found almost 10 meters away from the motorcycle, bearing bullet wounds in his back. A third individual was struck and run over by a car carrying several armed Americans, whom Pakistanis say were also CIA operatives. The latter have since returned to the United States, according to Pakistani officials.

Soon after Davis’ arrest, US President Barack Obama insisted that Pakistani authorities had illegally captured a “US consulate worker” of an “administrative and technical” capacity, attached to the US consulate in Lahore. But British broadsheet The Guardian has now confirmed that, according to information supplied by knowledgeable individuals in the US and Pakistan, Davis, 36, is “beyond a shadow of a doubt” an employee of the CIA. The paper also states that several US media outlets are aware of Davis’ intelligence capacity, but have refrained from revealing it under pressure from the US government.

Meanwhile, Pakistani newspaper The Nation has revealed that Davis has been serving as the CIA’s acting station chief in Pakistan since December, when Jonathan Banks, the Agency’s station chief there, was forced to leave the country after his cover was blown in a lawsuit. There are also suggestions, which are disputed by anonymous Pakistani officials, that the men killed by Davis were in fact officers of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, who were monitoring the CIA’s activities in Lahore. The Guardian says that the Pakistani government is “aware of Davis’s CIA status” but is afraid to release him, fearing “Egyptian-style protests” if Davis is allowed to return to Washington.

 Spies 

in the guise of 

diplomats