WASHINGTON: A Pakistani intelligence officer paid $200,000 to an extremist network to facilitate a deadly suicide bomb attack on CIA operatives at a base in Afghanistan in 2009, according to a declassified US government document obtained by an independent research group. The heavily redacted document obtained by the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute at George Washington University, suggests that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, and the Haqqani network were involved in facilitating the attack. Pakistan has, however, dismissed the claim, with Foreign Office spokesperson saying the allegations are preposterous. In a statement, the spokesperson pointed out that Pakistan has through a series of military operations severely damaged and weakened Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan and other militant and terrorist organisations. He said Pakistan is determined to eradicate the scourge of terrorism and has taken action against all terrorist elements without discrimination. The spokesman said Pakistan is among the biggest victims of terrorism, having lost tens of thousands of innocent lives, including over 5,000 valiant personnel of the law enforcement agencies. The released document said the December 30, 2009 attack on Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost in eastern Afghanistan, carried out by a Jordanian doctor who was working as a double agent for al Qaeda and the Taliban, was one of the most devastating in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency, killing seven and wounding six. The document, dated February 2010, said an unidentified Pakistani ISI officer provided $200,000 to Haqqani and another man ‘to enable the attack on Chapman’. An Afghan border commander in Khost was promised $100,000 of the money to facilitate the attack but died in the bombing, it said. A spokesperson for Pakistan’s embassy in Washington did not have any immediate comment. Because the document is heavily censored, it is not clear whether it represents an intelligence agency consensus or fragmentary reporting. One line, which has been crossed out, says: “This is an information report, not finally evaluated intelligence.”
