WASHINGTON, Aug 5: The Bush administration deliberately altered an intelligence document to show that Pakistan has allowed Al Qaeda to establish a safe haven in Pakistan, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.
The claim was made in the US national intelligence estimate, submitted to President George W. Bush last month.
“Drafts of that document were deliberately altered to reveal this conclusion, a move that ‘changed the complexion’ of the nearly finished report,” a senior intelligence official familiar with the revisions told the Post.
“The July 17 US claim sparked outrage in Islamabad but helped yield the result that US officials sought,” the Post observed.
“President Musharraf abandoned his truce with tribal leaders and on July 19 formally launched a military offensive aimed at breaking the terrorists’ grip on the frontier province.”
Dawn learned from official sources that Pakistan made several attempts to convince US officials not to say that Al Qaeda had established a safe haven in Fata and was told that this would be replaced with more appropriate term.
But when the report was released, it contained the term ‘safe haven.’
“The events leading to the public confrontation with Pakistan -- including the alarming evidence of Al Qaeda and Taliban retrenchment in northern Pakistan -- were described in new detail by more than half a dozen senior administration and intelligence officials,” the paper reported.
The report said that Washington also sent stream of high-powered visitors to Islamabad early this year --- starting with Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates on Feb. 12, and followed closely by Vice President Cheney and others – to show Gen. Musharraf sensitive intelligence revealing a substantial increase in Al Qaeda activity in the country's west.
Mr Cheney and the other visitors warned President Musharraf that his deal with the tribal chiefs had broken down and the terrorists had exploited the vacuum created by departing Pakistani troops and had begun rebuilding a network largely dismantled during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. Despite their concerns about President Musharraf’s alleged ‘half-hearted’ cooperation, the US continued to support him because of worries that the next Pakistani leader will be less cooperative, the report said.
