Thursday, May 14, 2009

US sharing drone data with Pakistan

Pakistan has been insisting that they be given their own Predator Drones, but the CIA and the Obama administration have been refusing the request. The CIA is against sharig intel with the Pakistanis because most of the time the information is leaked to the taliban or al Qaida.

Maybe sharing some real time video is a way to shut up the Pakistanis for a while. New York Times

WASHINGTON — The United States military for the first time has provided Pakistan with a broad array of surveillance information collected by American drones flying along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, American military officials said Wednesday. [...]

The offer to give Pakistan a much larger amount of imagery, including real-time video feeds and communications intercepts gleaned by remotely piloted aircraft, was intended to help defuse a growing dispute over how to use the drones and which country should control the secret missions flown in Pakistani airspace, American officials said.

In meetings last week with President Obama and other American officials in Washington, Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president, repeated his insistence that Pakistan be given its own armed Predator drones to attack operatives of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country’s tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan. But the American intelligence operatives who fly the armed drones inside Pakistan remain opposed to joint operations with Pakistani intelligence services, pointing out that past attempts were a failure. Several years ago, American officials gave Pakistan advance word of planned Predator attacks, but stopped the practice after the information leaked to militants.

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