According to the Post, researching
the black budget has led journalists to determine that US officials believe
there is a significant intelligence gap with regards to Pakistan, and that the
US is more interested than ever in that nation’s nuclear capabilities amid what
may be the comparably best relationship the two countries have experienced in
over a decade.
Despite nearly 12 years of heavy US
military activity following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack,
American/Pakistani tensions have loosened as of late, presumably after a
drawback in localized drone strikes and other covert combat that has subsided
since US Navy SEALS captured and killed former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden
in rural Pakistan in May 2011.
Although the Post has not released the
178-page black budget in full, it has selectively published a handful of
excerpts and quoted from it extensively in a number of articles to appear in
print and online since last week. According to the Post’s Greg Miller, Craig
Whitlock and Barton Gellman, the latest disclosures identified through analysis
of the top-secret documents “expose broad new levels of US distrust in an
already unsteady security partnership with Pakistan,” and “also reveal a more
expansive effort to gather intelligence on Pakistan than US officials have
disclosed.”
The document, reported the Post,
divulges uncertainty within the US intelligence community regarding Pakistan,
particularly in reference to the country’s nuclear capabilities. One excerpt of
the budget quoted by the Post warned that “knowledge of the security of
Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and associated material encompassed one of the most
critical set of . . . intelligence gaps.” According to the Post, US officials
were concerned about those “given the political instability, terrorist threat
and expanding inventory [of nuclear weapons] in that country.”
The paper also noted that while
Pakistan’s name is frequently absent from the budget request, the
counterterrorism and counter-proliferation operations waged by the US are
centralized in that nation, nestled in the Middle East between Iraq,
Afghanistan and India. Taking into account just its counterterrorism and
counter-proliferation measures, the US intelligence community sought more than
$27 billion in FY2013 — or around half of what was requested in all — most of
which is likely spent on covert operations. Former and current US intelligence
officials who spoke to the Post said the armed drone campaign that targets
al-Qaeda militants on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border is among the most
expensive of those covert programs.
So significant are US concerns with
regards to monitoring weapons of mass destruction in Pakistan, the Post
reported that the budget contains once section in which it focuses on
containing the spread of illicit weapons among two geographic regions: Pakistan
and elsewhere.
The Post reported that budget
suggests Pakistan contains 120 nuclear weapons, although US intelligence
agencies suspect that number will soon rise. In order to better understand that
nation’s nuke program, the budget discusses the creation of a Pakistan WMD
Analysis Cell, the paper reported, in order to keep tabs on where nuclear
materials move within the country. Together, the Post claimed, the CIA and
Pentagon were able “to develop and deploy a new compartmented collection
capability” that delivered a “more comprehensive understanding of strategic
weapons security in Pakistan.”
Despite that accomplishment,
however, the budget still noted that “the number of gaps associated with
Pakistani nuclear security remains the same,” and “the questions associated with
this intractable target are more complex.”
"If the Americans are expanding
their surveillance capabilities, it can only mean one thing," former
Pakistani ambassador to the US Husain Haqqani told the Post, "The mistrust
now exceeds the trust."
