Pakistan Sees Shared Intelligence Lapse

The maneuvering came three days after President Obama announced that Bin Laden had been killed in an American commando raid on a compound in Abbottabad, just 35 miles from the Pakistani capital — an event that prompted Western leaders, including senior officials in France and Britain, to say Pakistan had to explain why it said it had not been aware of the presence of the leader of Al Qaeda.

Shortly before he met with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, on Wednesday during a long-scheduled visit here, Mr. Gilani was asked the same question by reporters and said, “There is an intelligence failure of the whole world, not just Pakistan alone.”

He said Pakistan shared intelligence “with the rest of the world, including the United States,” so if there were what he called lapses in Pakistan “that means lapses from the whole world.”

After the meeting, Mr. Gilani that he did not believe the United States Congress would show its displeasure with Pakistan by cutting aid to his nuclear-armed nation and he said the West would continue to support Pakistan as a “responsible nation.”

“We are working together” against terrorism, he said.

Mr. Gilani’s trip to France is supposed to encourage French investment in his country, despite the momentous events that culminated in Bin Laden’s killing.

“Today, through your forum, I want to convince the world that instead of giving negative messages for Pakistan, rather we should send positive messages to Pakistan,” Mr. Gilani told a French employers’ group, according to Reuters. “We should have positive messages because no one, no single nation, alone can fight terrorism. Pakistan is a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.”

In recent days both the British prime minister, David Cameron, and the French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, have raised questions about how Bin Laden could have lived undetected so close to the Pakistani capital while he was the most wanted man in the United States — supposedly Pakistan’s ally in combating terrorism.

But both European leaders concluded that, as Mr. Juppé put it, Pakistan is such an important player in the region, specifically in determining the outcome of the war in Afghanistan, that “we have every interest in keeping good relations with it.”

“There will be no solution in Afghanistan, no long-lasting political solution, if we do not manage to work in trust with Pakistan,” Mr. Juppé said.

As Mr. Gilani visited Paris, another senior Pakistani official, Salman Bashir, told the BBC that “Pakistan has played a pivotal role” in the hunt for Bin Laden and that it had even drawn the attention of American intelligence agencies in 2009 to suspicions about the compound where Bin Laden was killed.

But he stopped shorting of saying Pakistan’s own intelligence agents had known Bin Laden was living there, arguing that it took the superior resources of the Central Intelligence Agency to make that discovery.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said the “intelligence flow indicating some foreigners in the surroundings of Abbottabad, continued till mid-April 2011.”

“It is important to highlight that taking advantage of much superior technological assets, the C.I.A. exploited the intelligence leads given by us to identify and reach Osama bin Laden,” the statement said.

Pakistani officials have been angered by a widely reported assertion by the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, that Washington did not share advance knowledge of the raid with Pakistan because it might have leaked, allowing Bin Laden to escape.

Romain Parlier contributed reporting.

 

In Search for F.B.I. Director, Administration Seeks a Shared Philosophy

Robert S. Mueller III, who became the F.B.I. director just a week before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, will complete his 10-year term on Sept. 4, having led the in-progress effort to transform the bureau into a domestic intelligence agency.

A small team led by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been evaluating potential successors and, according to officials familiar with the deliberations, has reached certain views about the ideal candidate.

In particular, officials said, the administration wants someone who shares the philosophy and has the management abilities to press forward with changing the bureau’s culture, so that agents focus less on solving already-completed crimes and more on uncovering potential threats — even at the expense of accumulating arrests and convictions.

Possible contenders include James B. Comey, a former deputy attorney general; Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney in Chicago; Raymond W. Kelly, the New York City police commissioner; Ronald K. Noble, a former enforcement head at the Treasury Department who now leads Interpol; and Kenneth L. Wainstein, a former assistant attorney general for national security.

Officials say the administration is also looking for someone who will be easily confirmed and who will be respected both inside the bureau and elsewhere in the intelligence community.

Finally, they say, they want someone with the character to be a strong leader during a crisis and to maintain an appropriate level of independence, but who would keep a low political profile and focus on operational matters while deferring to the White House and the Justice Department on policy issues.

In many ways the administration appears to be looking for a clone of Mr. Mueller, who worked relatively smoothly with four attorneys general of widely divergent personalities and political views, under both a Republican and a Democratic president.

“Bob is a hard person to replace,” Mr. Holder told reporters last week. “He has done a really excellent job in transforming the F.B.I. He is a person who has the confidence of the people in the F.B.I. and people in the intelligence community. He’s a person I’ve worked with for a number of years — he’s a friend. He has the president’s confidence as well. So we want to make sure the person picked to be his successor will be able to fill those really large shoes that he leaves.”

Mr. Holder said the administration wanted to have the next director in place by the time Mr. Mueller is required to step down. He hinted that a nomination could come as early as May, though other officials said that later was more likely. The Senate has been slow to vote on Justice Department nominees lately; by contrast, in 2001, the Senate confirmed Mr. Mueller less than a month after his nomination.

It is not clear whether there is a front-runner for the job.

Most of the high-profile potential nominees come with advantages and disadvantages.

Mr. Comey, a career prosecutor who was the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York before his elevation to deputy attorney general, earned a reputation for independence by leading — with Mr. Mueller at his side — an internal Bush administration revolt in March 2004 over the legality of the program of surveillance without warrants, forcing the White House to modify the program.

Mr. Comey is now identified as a Republican political appointee, which could make it easier for him to win confirmation, but the Obama administration might also be reluctant to signal that it could not find a Democrat for the job. Mr. Comey also now has a well-paying job at Lockheed Martin and may be reluctant to leave it.

Mr. Fitzgerald, a longtime prosecutor and a holdover United States attorney from the Bush administration, also has a strong reputation for independence, as leader of the investigation into the leak of the name of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, Valerie Plame Wilson.

Like Mr. Comey, Mr. Fitzgerald now has the public identity of a Republican political appointee. Moreover, his demonstrated willingness to challenge the Bush White House could give its current occupants pause, though they would never say so in public.

Mr. Kelly, by contrast, is a Democrat with a strong law enforcement résumé. Before becoming commissioner of the New York Police Department, he was a Treasury Department official during the Clinton administration and supervised the United States Customs Service, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has endorsed him for the F.B.I. position.

But Mr. Kelly would be 70 at the start of his 10-year term. In addition, his efforts to expand the Police Department’s counterterrorism intelligence-gathering capabilities have led to turf-war friction with F.B.I. officials. He also helped scuttle Mr. Holder’s signature plan to prosecute the Sept. 11 defendants in Manhattan.

Mr. Noble, too, is a Democrat who oversaw the Treasury Department’s enforcement arm for a period during the Clinton administration. He has global stature as the first American to be elected to lead Interpol, developing ties that would resonate with the F.B.I.’s increasing presence overseas. But he has less operational experience than other candidates and is somewhat less well-known in Washington.

Mr. Wainstein is the candidate most closely associated with Mr. Mueller, whom he worked with first as the F.B.I. general counsel and then as his chief of staff. Later, Mr. Wainstein became the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, then led the Justice Department’s national security division. Since leaving the department, he has frequently testified before Congress about national security legal policy issues. Like Mr. Comey and Mr. Fitzgerald, Mr. Wainstein is now identified as a Republican appointee — though he, too, was a longtime federal prosecutor and is generally respected on both sides of the aisle.

At least two prominent figures are said to have made it clear that they do not want to be considered for the job, including Merrick B. Garland, a federal appeals court judge, and Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general and a member of the Sept. 11 commission.

 

Obama: Restoring Fiscal Responsibility a Shared Sacrifice

 VOA News ?April 16, 2011

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden meet with the co-chairmen of the president's deficit reduction commission, including Alan Simpson, right, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, April 14, 2011

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has approved a budget plan that imposes dramatic spending cuts on several domestic programs, including those that provide health coverage for the elderly.

Republicans won passage of the non-binding plan Friday in a 235 to 193 vote, with all Democrats in the chamber voting against it.

The Republican plan proposes cutting the deficit by $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

President Barack Obama condemned the Republican plan a few days ago, and presented his own plan aimed at cutting $4 trillion from the deficit over 12 years.

In his weekly address Saturday, Obama said cutting education and entitlements for seniors while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans does not represent a shared sacrifice.

The president's proposal includes cutting spending and raising taxes on wealthy Americans.

The Republican plan is based on tax cuts and sharp cuts in non-defense spending.

Mr. Obama says defense spending is an area where more savings can be realized.? The president also says health care spending could be reduced through reform instead of deep cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, health care programs for the poor and the elderly.

In the weekly Republican address, Senator Tom Coburn says President Obama's plan rations health care, giving too much control to those who manage Medicaid and Medicare.

Coburn says the Republican plan would save Medicare by giving patients currently under 55 years of age access to health care equal to what members of Congress receive.

He said the plan would also provide states with grants to help the poorest patients.

The debate between plans is expected to be intensive as the issue moves to the Senate.

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