WASHINGTON: US intelligence officials helped India and Pakistan swap top secret intelligence in the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks in November, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
The intelligence sharing between the two countries, whose relationship is often shaky at best, was facilitated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) beginning just days after the attacks that killed 179 people over three days.
The Washington Post quoted US and foreign government sources in the story, who acknowledged that those efforts helped clear the way for Islamabad last week to admit that the attacks were partly planned on its soil.
“In the aftermath of the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the CIA orchestrated back-channel intelligence exchanges between India and Pakistan, allowing the two former enemies to quietly share highly sensitive evidence while the Americans served as neutral arbiters,” US and foreign government sources familiar with the arrangement told the daily.
“The exchanges, which began days after the deadly assault in late November, gradually helped the two sides overcome mutual suspicions and paved the way for Islamabad’s announcement last week acknowledging that some of the planning for the attack had occurred on Pakistani soil,” The Post said in a front-page article.
“Officials from both countries said the unparalleled cooperation was a factor in Pakistan’s decision to bring criminal charges against nine Pakistanis accused of involvement in the attack,” the daily said.
Pakistan also said a criminal case had been registered against the suspects, many of whom were already in Pakistani police custody. The swapped information included communications intercepts and physical evidence about the planning and execution of the three-day killing rampage.
Indian and Pakistani officials shared their information with the CIA, which vetted its content and helped fill in blanks, the Post reported, quoting Pakistani and US officials.
This past week, Rahman Malik, a top Pakistani Interior Ministry official, told reporters in Islamabad that a trawler transported the attackers from Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi to Indian waters and the men then used an inflatable boat to reach the port city of Mumbai.
