{"id":186890,"date":"2013-09-03T20:10:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-04T01:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/09\/03\/the-latest-snowden-release-does-not-surprise\/"},"modified":"2013-09-03T20:10:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-04T01:10:00","slug":"the-latest-snowden-release-does-not-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/09\/03\/the-latest-snowden-release-does-not-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"The Latest Snowden Release Does Not Surprise\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that people at all levels of the US government <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/top-secret-us-intelligence-files-show-new-levels-of-distrust-of-pakistan\/2013\/09\/02\/e19d03c2-11bf-11e3-b630-36617ca6640f_story.html\">do not trust Pakistan<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaeda, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">No other nation draws as much scrutiny across so many categories of national security concern.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">A 178-page summary of the U.S. intelligence community\u2019s \u201cblack budget\u201d shows that the United States has ramped up its surveillance of Pakistan\u2019s nuclear arms, cites previously undisclosed concerns about biological and chemical sites there, and details efforts to assess the loyalties of counter\u00adterrorism sources recruited by the CIA.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Pakistan appears at the top of charts listing critical U.S. intelligence gaps. It is named as a target of newly formed analytic cells. And fears about the security of its nuclear program are so pervasive that a budget section on containing the spread of illicit weapons divides the world into two categories: Pakistan and everybody else.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The disclosures \u2014 based on documents provided to The Washington Post by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden \u2014 expose broad new levels of U.S. distrust in an already unsteady security partnership with Pakistan, a politically unstable country that faces rising Islamist militancy. They also reveal a more expansive effort to gather intelligence on Pakistan than U.S. officials have disclosed.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Not surprising.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve heard this from a lot of different sources over the years.<\/p>\n<p>For anyone to trust Pakistan, and particularly its military and intelligence services, would have to be a thoroughly deluded fool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It appears that people at all levels of the US government do not trust Pakistan: The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaeda, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan.No other nation draws as much scrutiny across so &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1102,1103,1151],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intelligence","category-secrecy","category-south-asia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186890\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}