Progress in the dialogue

The resumed dialogue between India and Pakistan after the breakthrough achieved in January this year has completed its first stage with meetings in New Delhi between the foreign secretaries and then the foreign ministers. The latter meeting drew the curtain on this round with a commitment from both sides to continue the process until all problems had been addressed.

The dialogue will move to the summit level when President Musharraf meets Mr Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, in New York where both will go later this month, in connection with the UN General Assembly. Both leaders have publicly announced their intention to steer the relationship in the direction of peace and cooperation.

Following this important contact that would doubtless give a fillip to the dialogue process, two meetings are scheduled between Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, and his Indian counterpart, one in New Delhi later this year, and one in Dhaka early next year on the eve of Saarc summit.

The foreign ministers are likely to meet almost every month on various occasions. The bilateral dialogue, however, will resume after a meeting between the foreign secretaries before the end of the year.

Though the joint communique, issued at the conclusion of the first round strikes a positive note and promises greater progress, as the dialogue takes up the various items of the agreed agenda, a certain amount of acrimony has begun to manifest itself in statements from the two sides, specially on kashmir.

While accentuating the positive on the dialogue process itself, India has kept repeating its allegations that Pakistan continues to facilitate the entry of militants into Kashmir.

With a cease fire in force along the LoC since last November, which the Indian side has utilised to put up a fence along it, the Pakistan side has not only denied this accusation, but has drawn attention to the heightened human rights violations by India in the occupied Kashmir.

Analysts of the indo-Pakistan scene see a pattern in the strategy of New Delhi that points clearly to their game plan. They have agreed to the resumption of the dialogue, but want to pursue a strategy that is working in their dialogue with China.

The major obstacle in normality in Sino-Indian relations is the boundary dispute, which caused a conflict in 1962. For more than a decade, both countries put this problem on the back burner, while moving at a faster pace on economic and cultural relations.

Neither side has changed its basic stance, but both sides attach importance to normalizing relations wherever possible, and to remove the impression that they face a threat from the other.

India's expectation that Pakistan may be persuaded to follow a similar line with regard to Kashmir is not likely to be realized. Firstly, Jammu and Kashmir is a densely populated region with over 15 million inhabitants, unlike the territory disputed between India and China, most of which is a sparsely populated region at very high altitudes.

Secondly, China has been proposing a package deal, based on accepting the realities inherited from history. On the contrary, the status quo in Jammu and Kashmir consists of India occupying a large territory, on the basis of its military might, by violating UN resolutions that provide for the people of the state to determine their future. The matter involves the very basis on which British India was partitioned.

More seriously, the Muslim majority in Kashmir is totally alienated from India, which has used strong-arm tactics, amounting to state terrorism, to suppress the indigenous freedom struggle launched by the Kashmiris 15 years ago.

An Indian force of 700,000 armed men is engaged in suppressing the struggle for rights by the Kashmiri people, over 75,000 of whom have laid down their lives, with many more jailed and tortured, thousands of women dishonoured, and countless houses and villages destroyed. Unless a solution to the Kashmir problem can be found that is acceptable to them, peace will not return to this "heaven on earth".

Pakistan could resume the dialogue, and even agree on some areas of immediate interest, such as the gas pipeline from Iran to India through Pakistan, or resolution of lesser disputes such as Siachen, Sir Creek, and improved cultural and commercial ties.

But a sense of mutual trust and confidence, that is essential for good-neighbourly relations, will not be achieved till the core issue of Kashmir is resolved.

That a summit meeting is planned shortly between the two countries at New York is most fortunate. Though the CBMs have been proceeding, and many from the professions of art and culture from both sides continue to pay visits and strengthen a positive outlook, signs of emerging mistrust cannot be ignored.

Indian accusations that militants keep entering Kashmir from Pakistan controlled territory are matched by allegations from some responsible Pakistanis that the numerous Indian consulates opened in Afghanistan are mainly engaged in activities hostile to Pakistan.

This conclusion is being drawn because anti-Pakistan sentiment is being fanned, and the Indian consulates have no legitimate interests like welfare of nationals or handling of trade.

Doubts are already being raised whether the dialogue is getting anywhere. Some progress was visible from the meetings that took up items from the eight-point agenda, notably on nuclear CBMs, easing of visa policy, and the positions on Siachen appeared to be moving towards congruence.

The impression was given that the dialogue, once initiated, would move with deliberations and a resolve to find solutions rather than look for reasons to call the process off.

In this context, some progress can be achieved even on Kashmir by opening a road connection between the two parts of Kashmir to facilitate contacts between members of divided families.

One point, on which India has not made any move to take cognizance of, is any reduction in the ferocity of its repression of the Kashmiris. With the appearance of cracks within the All Parties Hurriyet Conference, India seems keener to divide and weaken the Kashmiri movement for democratic rights, than to deal meaningfully with their aspirations. Indeed, the Indian foreign minister has not minced words about the status of Kashmir in the Indian constitution.

In brief, the picture that emerges at this stage of the dialogue is that India is ready to take numerous steps that would help normalize the relations and yield economic benefits.

These would include signing of agreement on the Iran-India gas pipeline, and a considerable easing of trade and cultural exchanges. Progress can be achieved on nuclear CBMs, Siachen and Sir Creek from within the items of the agreed agenda.

But a serious and in-depth consideration of the kashmir dispute is not envisaged, nor would India compromise on its basic stand. Its maximum "concession" would be confined to accepting the LoC as the international boundary. India would also accommodate Pakistan by including Kashmiris in the dialogue process.

In this perspective, the statement by the Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman that the concluding meeting between the two foreign ministers had produced a highly significant agreement points to a resolve by Pakistan to go the extra mile to keep the process going.

The report that Mr Tariq Aziz, who is secretary of Pakistan's National Security Council, has held meetings with Indian security adviser, J.N. Dixit, also points to special efforts to remove hurdles to the dialogue process.

It may be recalled that he had met Mr Brajesh Mishra, the security adviser to the BJP government, in late 2003, to prepare the ground for the breakthrough achieved at the Saarc summit in Islamabad in early January 2004.

All the main indicators for the current Indo-Pakistan dialogue are positive. After the 10-month long attempt at coercion from December 2001 to October 2002, Indian had realized that durable peace, and stability in the subcontinent could only be achieved through the dialogue Pakistan had been proposing from the start of Gen Musharraf's assumption of leadership. Public opinion in the both countries is in favour of calling a halt to conflict and confrontation, and focusing instead on cooperation to promote development.

The major world powers, and the US in particular, are keen to promote detente, and mutually beneficial cooperation in the subcontinent. We can surely move to the next phase of the dialogue with the conviction that problems are best solved through patient, peaceful negotiation.

Corporate role in abuses

No fewer than six separate military investigations have been empowered to probe the terrible abuses that took place at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the breakdown in the military chain of command that allowed those crimes to happen.

Repeatedly, though, investigators have come across an element of the scandal that is altogether outside the military orbit - independent corporate contractors. Private contractors have been an inescapable part of this public embarrassment, and yet little to nothing is being done to make sure that such a fiasco doesn't happen again.

Moreover, while two U.S. Army reports issued last month explored the question of military command responsibility, no one has demanded accountability from the corporate chain of command that played an incontrovertible part in the Abu Ghraib abuses.

Members of the 372nd Military Police Company are facing prosecution for dereliction of duty and the mistreatment of prisoners, but none of the contractors implicated in similar offences have yet faced that sort of scrutiny.

More than 20,000 private contractors are working for the U.S. government in Iraq, performing a wide range of military functions. Employees from CACI International Inc. - whose motto is "Ever Vigilant" - made up more than half of all the analysts and interrogators at Abu Ghraib, while all the translators who made it possible for the interrogators and guards to communicate with the prisoners were employees from the Titan Corp.

Sixteen of the 44 incidents of abuse the Army's latest reports say happened at Abu Ghraib involved private contractors outside the domain of both the U.S. military and the U.S. government.

Army investigators have reported that six employees of private contractors were involved in incidents of abuse, but potentially more may have been involved in other crimes in Iraq and elsewhere.

For example, one unidentified contractor has been accused of an alleged rape at Abu Ghraib, while a CIA contract employee has been indicted in North Carolina on charges of criminal assault for allegedly beating a detainee in Afghanistan with a flashlight. The detainee died shortly afterwards.

Thus, while Lt. Gen. Anthony Jones and Maj. Gen. George Fay, lead authors of the most recent Army reports, were assigned the task of looking only at the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, it is no surprise that time and again they mention private contractors - on 38 pages of their reports to be exact. What is a surprise is how much their reports, focused on an Army brigade, reveal about an outsourcing episode gone bad.

Both Jones and Fay concluded that a key reason for the predicament at Abu Ghraib was the failure of Pentagon planners to send sufficient forces, and the right kind of forces, to Iraq. Thus, when the war turned into a troubled occupation and the number of detainees rose, the Pentagon turned to private companies to hire additional help quickly.

Confronting the problem of controlling private contractors requires challenging a common myth: that outsourcing saves money. This philosophy stems from a wider craze of privatizing government services that began long before President Bush took office.

But hiring private employees in Iraq at pay rates several times more than what soldiers make, plus paying the overhead at the private firms, has never been about saving money. It's more about avoiding tough political choices concerning military needs, reserve call-ups and the human consequences of war.

In fact, the contract to hire private interrogators at Abu Ghraib wasn't even opened to competitive bids designed to find the best price. Instead, the programme was run through a pre existing information technology contract CACI had with the Interior Department - and contrary to federal acquisition regulations, the contract was written by an employee of the firm.

The process used was so convoluted that months later, neither Gen. Fay nor Gen. Jones could figure out just who wanted private interrogators in the first place or why.

Hiring private contractors comes with another hidden price: corporate practices that would not pass military muster. Well before the Fay and Jones investigations, former employees of CACI had alleged that many of their fellow interrogators lacked proper experience or training.

They asserted that in the rush to fill the billable interrogator jobs, the firm had conducted five-minute phone interviews with applicants and hadn't bothered to check their risumis, fingerprints or criminal records. The firm denied this, but the Army investigators found that 35 percent of the contract interrogators "lacked formal military training as interrogators."

The Fay report blandly summed up the use of contractors at Abu Ghraib as "problematic." But the report's details provide a searing indictment of the practice. Hiring private contractors for sensitive, mission-critical and dangerous roles is contrary to long-standing military doctrine on what jobs civilians are supposed to have in warfare and what roles are to be kept within the force.

"Doctrine provides the foundation for Army operations," Fay noted. The non-doctrinal use of contractors opened the door to making up other rules along the way, such as the non-doctrinal use of torture.

The arrival of contract interrogators blurred lines of authority and obscured the differences between civilian and military tasks. This resembled the confused military command structure that investigators found at Abu Ghraib between military intelligence and military policy units.

Civilians lie outside the chain of command, but contractors should answer to their clients - in this case, the U.S. taxpayer and the military. While Pentagon officials previously testified to Congress that contractors were never in supervisory roles, Army investigators documented numerous instances in which contractors "supervised" military officers (as specified in the job advertisements they answered) and other instances in which contractors demonstrated disdain for their uniformed clients.

One CACI contractor (who, the Fay report said, tossed about and dragged a handcuffed prisoner) allegedly drank alcohol at the prison and refused to take orders from a military officer, saying, "I have been doing my job for 20 years and do not need a 20-year-old to tell me how to do my job."

The Fay report noted that one of the Army's mantras is to "train as you fight." But training that took place before the Iraq invasion didn't include so many contractors in so many roles critical to the mission.

Thus, Fay wrote, the military was "unprepared for the arrival of contract interrogators and had no training to fall back on in the management, control, and discipline of these personnel."

Soldiers didn't know how to handle contractors in order to "protect the Army's interests," he added. Despite all these dark findings, Army investigators are at a loss over how to hold the contractors accountable.

The Army referred individual employees' names to the Justice Department more than three months ago, but Attorney General John Ashcroft has yet to take action. By hiring people through an Interior Department contract, the Army may inadvertently have created a legal loophole that might prevent any attempt to bring charges against employees of the private companies. Existing laws cover Pentagon hires working on U.S. bases, but not those working for other agencies.

Some people have proposed the use of war crimes statutes and even the Patriot Act. CACI and Titan are also targets of separate Abu Ghraib-related lawsuits - a class action by torture victims' families and a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act suit filed by a human rights group.

But so far nothing official has actually been done. Much as the civilian leadership at the Pentagon escaped unscathed, the corporate leadership at the firms has avoided investigation and possible punishment. So far, the only formal investigation has been one conducted by the firm involved; CACI's investigation of CACI cleared CACI. Clearly, this is insufficient.

One recourse could be to let market forces punish bad corporate behaviour by firing, or at least not rehiring, the companies that have done wrong. But the Army has not even exercised that minimal option; it awarded a $23 million extension to CACI just last month, before the investigations were complete.

The abuses at Abu Ghraib - arguably the worst military scandal in a generation - cannot be put to rest until we come to grips with military privatization gone wrong.

The government can investigate the issue, bring people to justice and ensure that lessons are learned so that the same mistakes are not repeated. Or it can continue to have private firms do our public jobs.-Dawn/Washington Post Service

The writer is a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution, US.

Another swing of the magic wand

Pakistan is fortunate. For the first time in its 57 year history it has a prime minister who lives beneath his means. To the vast Pakistani electorate living in the politically arid wasteland between Attock in the north and Tharparkar in the south of the country, Mr Shaukat Aziz's elevation to the nation's highest executive office will come as a relief.

It has seen far too many prime ministers eager to enrich themselves by dipping into the national exchequer. There is no danger now of a prime minister having to answer allegations by the National Accountability Bureau or to hire lawyers to defend charges in Swiss or British courts.

Since his days as the manager of the Citibank branch at Alfalah building in Lahore, over the years his employers have supported and promoted him, providing him with the sort of nest-egg that only geese in fables were said to lay. With property in London and New York, he does not need a mansion in Surrey.

If Mr Shaukat Aziz is at all tempted, it shall not be by wealth. If he is corrupted at all during the period of his prime ministership (however long that may be), it may be by what Henry Kissinger described once as the ultimate aphrodisiac - power.

At the moment he has everything within his grasp. He enjoys the absolute confidence of the only power in Pakistan - the army headed by President General Pervez Musharraf - and he enjoys the absolute confidence of the only power that matters in the world, the United States headed by President George W. Bush. Protected by this dual patronage, he can afford to feel doubly secure.

Musharraf is unlikely to shed his uniform at the end of this year (it was this very uniform that he sought to protect when he ousted Nawaz Sharif in October 1999) and President George W. Bush does not intend to lose the re-election, as his father did to Clinton.

Having reached the top of the greasiest pole in politics, therefore, Mr Aziz does not have to worry about the strength of the pole that supports him. Any danger that might assail him will come not from his patrons above nor from his enemies below; it will come from his fresh ivy-green friends and newest well-wishers, pre-eminent amongst whom might well be the man who was his immediate predecessor as prime minister. Mr Aziz would do well to take Mian Nawaz Sharif's advice on this score. After all, Nawaz Sharif used to take his advice on private banking matters.

Those who had expected Mr Shaukat Aziz to turn a new leaf in the dog-eared book of Pakistan's politics must be disappointed that he should have taken such obvious dictation in the selection and size of his first cabinet. They should not fret.

New prime ministers often do not have the time to put together a list of their future apostles. On August 14, 1947, for instance, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (then India's prime minister-elect) handed Lord Mount batten an envelope that should have contained the names of India's first cabinet.

Nehru handed it over with a ceremony, and Mount batten received it with equal gravity. When Mount batten opened the envelope, it contained a blank sheet of paper. Nehru later provided the names.

In Mr Aziz's re-enactment of that episode, a blank sheet of paper was inked in as the list of his new cabinet. Ministers were sworn in first and assigned their portfolios later.

Ironically, the very size of Prime Minister Aziz's cabinet may prove to be his strength, for in the early years of Musharraf's stewardship as chief executive of the country, the leanness of the dream team of apolitical technocrats proved to be a problem.

There were fewer ministers with larger egos, each vying for Musharraf's attention. Today, there will be no such clashes of temperament in Shaukat Aziz's cabinet. Everyone is clear who reports to whom, and who ultimately reports to whom.

It is an example of Mr Aziz's adaptability that he has converted his bottom-up training in Citibank to a top-down style more in consonance with the precepts of the Pakistan army.

It is a tribute to his managerial skills that he has been able to convince Musharraf of his mastery over the economy and of his own indispensability. He is a modern Todar Mal to Musharraf's Akbar.

While Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz appear to be two inseparable sides of the same coin, it is clear whose profile commands currency. There are a few, however, who (unlike Musharraf) harbour niggling doubts about the fiscal soundness of the country's economy.

For example, how did we come by $12 billion of foreign currency reserves? Should we have been prouder of them had they been earned rather than bought? How stable is the Karachi Stock Exchange index that has exploded above the 5,000 mark? Or is it a bubble fuelled by supportive purchases by government-advised banks and financial institutions, including it is said the Employees' Old Age Benefit Institution which usually errs on the side of prudence rather than of speculation.

Is the growing upsurge in urban consumer credit a true measure of our economic well-being? In an agro-based economy, for the past four years, we have been selling more motor cars than tractors.

By retaining the finance portfolio Prime Minister Aziz will continue his personal style of financial management, designed understandably to gratify his superiors, and foreclose any threat from talented challengers, such as Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh who balanced the budget as finance minister in Sindh, and then as federal minister for privatization has successfully disinvested shares in OGDC & PPL, shares that could be convertible in due course into votes. It is gambit straight from Mrs Margaret Thatcher's lexicon on privatization.

An area in which Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz could be used gainfully by President Pervez Musharraf might well be in resolving outstanding issues with India. After all, soon after taking over as finance minister, Mr Aziz had succeeded in bringing about a settlement in the contentious Hubco case between the irate foreign shareholders and an obstinate Wapda management, headed at that time by Chairman Zulfikar Ali Khan, then a serving army general.

It is not inconceivable, given his selection as the minister-in-waiting to Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee during his visit to Islamabad early this year, that Mr Shaukat Aziz now as prime minister may be required to ratify what Musharraf's other Aziz - his private secretary, Mr Tariq Aziz - concludes off the screen with J.N. Dixit.

As President Richard Nixon said to Chairman Mao Zedong to explain the courage of his decision to visit China in 1972: "Often only the Right can do what the Left talks about." In Indo-Pakistan relations, perhaps only a civilian prime minister will be able to do what the army has already talked about.

Millions on this side of the border and over a billion on the Indian side would welcome any positive change in Indo-Pakistan relations, however achieved and wherever negotiated. They all have everything to gain and very little to lose from such a rapprochement.

When both the prime ministers of India and of Pakistan owe their positions to an authority - one electoral and the other military - that decides from outside the cabinet room, both would seem to be perfectly poised to give effect to decisions (even on the vexed issue of Jammu and Kashmir) that governments on both sides may have desired but dared not execute. Like this, no one need lose face. To some in the subcontinent, losing face can often be as bad, if not worse, than losing a war.

US spy scandal and Pakistan

The latest spy scandal in the Pentagon involving senior officials allegedly passing on secret information to Israel brings to mind another such incident concerning Pakistan and its nuclear secrets.

The incident then developed into a bitter clash bordering on personal animosity between a Carter administration intelligence official and one of America's top journalists working for The New York Times.

Even though Israel has friends and neocon supporters well-entrenched in top positions in America's sensitive and policy-making departments, the Mossad still runs its own intelligence operations - not necessarily unknown to the CIA or FBI.

In fact, as the Pakistan case during the Carter administration shows, pro-Zionist American officials flout their government's orders with impunity and pass on unauthorized information to Israel without being chastized or accused of illegality.

It is unlikely that the CIA, FBI or the National Intelligence Agency would not know of these activities, but either they choose to ignore these blatant violations of American law or perhaps realize it is unwise to obstruct or expose Israel's intelligence-gathering activity in America.

The situation concerning Pakistan came to light when Admiral Bobby Inman became acting director of the National Security Agency and deputy director of the CIA during the Carter administration (1976-80).

As a top intelligence official, Inman knew that under a tacit agreement between Israel and the US, the latter shared with the former some sensitive intelligence gathered from satellite imagery.

The agreement was restricted in scope and confined the sharing of intelligence data to countries in Israel's neighbourhood and within a radius of 250 miles. To his horror, however, Inman realized that his department was passing on information to Israel about countries far beyond the 250-mile limit zone and about states as far away as Libya and Pakistan.

Even though Israel normally maintains a low foreign-policy posture towards Pakistan, it has a special interest in this country's nuclear programme. By 1980, when the Carter era was coming to an end, Pakistan was under America's nuclear and human rights sanctions.

The Soviets had, no doubt, invaded Afghanistan (Christmas eve 1979), but the liberal Carter administration was in no mood to countenance Pakistan's military-mullah dictatorship headed by Ziaul Haq, who had just hanged Z.A. Bhutto, the country's first elected prime minister. Under the Symington amendment, all aid to Pakistan had been suspended, and Washington was keeping a close watch on Islamabad's nuclear programme.

Yet the information gained through satellite surveillance and other sources was meant for the benefit of America and not for any other country. However, Israel's friends and moles were passing on information to Tel Aviv on Pakistan's nuclear programme regularly, even though this violated the 250-mile territorial limit.

Furious, Inman stopped this clandestine practice. Little did he realize that he was sealing his political fate, for the Zionist lobby never forgave him. The first to dash to Washington was Ariel Sharon, then Israel's defence minister, who protested to Defence Secretary Weinberger against Inman's action.

Weinberger stood by Inman and told Sharon that the former had acted correctly by enforcing the 250-mile rule. Surprisingly, Inman's own boss, CIA chief William Casey - a friend of Ziaul Haq's - seemed terribly unhappy with the admiral's decision.

Among newspapers which went after Inman's blood was The New York Times, the attack being spearheaded by pro-Israeli hawk William Safire. Normally, journalists well-wired into the Pentagon and the State Department rely on their own sources to file reports for their papers.

This is true of journalists the world over. A source may confide a development to a friend - without realizing that he was giving out a secret or he may plant a story through a deliberate leak - but he does it on his own.

This is not the case, however, with senior journalists working for leading American newspapers, especially the NYT, owned by the Jewish Salzburg family. Invariably, they demand information. If it is denied to them, they bully him and take it out on the official refusing to oblige.

Inman's clash with NYT and Safire developed initially over an issue that had nothing to do with Pakistan. A certain Congressman had passed on sensitive information gleaned during a committee hearing to a foreign government, and NYT as well as the Wall Street Journal had got wind of the matter.

They contacted Inman to ask whether they could know the source through which the government had come to know of the Congressman's misdemeanour. Under an arrangement worked out with the media, Inman was not supposed to supply information to newsmen; instead, he was to confine his role to saying yes or no about whether a story should or should not be published, the criterion being the damage it would or would not do to America's security interests.

However, even before NYT could talk to Inman, WSJ went ahead and published the story, telling its readers about the source who had tipped off the government about the Congressman's betrayal.

The WSJ story not only embarrassed the American government, NYT felt hurt because WSJ was one up. NYT also suspected that either Inman himself or someone else on his behalf had tipped off the WSJ.

To sort matters out, Inman and his aides flew to New York for a working lunch with the NYT, and the CIA-NSA boss made it clear that his role was confined to a yes or no and that he would never himself be a source of information for any newspaper.

The NYT staff accused Inman of imposing censorship, and Safire, terribly unhappy with the Admiral for imposing the 250-mile limit understanding and denying secrets about Pakistan to Israel, told him he would live to regret his non-cooperation with the NYT.

He would ring up Inman every now and then and demand information, even though Inman had made clear what his role would be. In return, Safire stigmatized Inman in his columns, accusing him of being hostile to Israel and called him a manipulator of the press and a tax cheat.

As was bound to happen, given the power of America's Zionist print and electronic media, Inman got stuck with that multi-purpose epithet that seals the fate of any American politician or bureaucrat on the wrong side of Israel - anti-Semitic.

Thirteen years later, when this writer was Dawn's Washington correspondent, Inman went public with these facts when President Clinton nominated him for defence secretary to replace Les Aspin, who had resigned for personal reasons.

At press conferences held in Washington DC and in Austin, Texas, Inman said of Safire, "He was very direct that if I didn't become a source, I would regret it in the subsequent coverage."

Inman also said that Israel could not have bombed and destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981 without the American satellite imagery that had been supplied to Tel Aviv without authorization.

A brilliant naval officer, Inman, now 73, requested President Clinton to withdraw his nomination as defence secretary, because he did not wish to be attacked in the press "on a daily basis".

Inman was careful to avoid the word Zionist, for it is bad manners in America to find fault with Israel or Zionists, even where criticism is due. Instead, he said he was being victimized for what he called "neo-McCarthyism" led by Safire and Senate minority leader Bob Dole, one of President Clinton's political foes.

Inman said he did not wish his naval career and his record of service in the CIA and NSA to be destroyed or distorted, adding "I'm simply not prepared to pay the current cost of public service in distortion of my record."

It is not clear till today whether Inman or anyone else took action against those officials who had violated the 250-mile limit and supplied secrets about Pakistan to Israel.