Dirty Wars

46. The Curious Case of Raymond Davis: Act II

PAKISTAN, 2011—In Lahore, Raymond Davis lived and worked out of a US safe house in Upper Mall that he reportedly shared with five CIA security personnel. JSOC operatives also used the house. Far from being a diplomat, Davis worked on an ultrasecret, highly compartmentalized, classified team of men tasked with conducting sensitive surveillance and intelligence operations that could lead to targeted killing or capture. Among their tasks, according to US officials, was covertly gathering intel on the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba. On January 27, Davis was conducting an “area familiarization route,” putting him out in the open on the streets of Lahore for hours. He scouted several locations, including religious schools and government buildings. That’s why the Pakistani authorities found, in his car, the high-tech kit of a clandestine operative: weapons with enough ammo to fight a small street war, surveillance equipment, wire cutters, knives and infrared equipment. It would also explain the collection of various identity cards bearing different job descriptions, as well as theatrical makeup. Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer told me it is common for covert operators to alter their appearance to blend in. “It’s acting without a script,” he said. “That is really what it comes down to. It’s tradecraft.”

Davis also had in his possession a “blood chit,” which is distributed to all US military personnel entering a hostile environment. According to the US military’s Joint Publication 3-50 on Personnel Recovery, a blood chit “is a small sheet of material on which is imprinted an American flag, a statement in English and several languages common to the populace in the operational area, and numbers in each corner and, in some cases, centered under the flag, that identify the particular chit. The blood chit identifies the bearer as an American and promises a reward by the USG [US government] to anyone providing assistance to the bearer or helping the bearer to return to friendly control.” They are to be used by US military forces under siege, lost or in imminent danger of capture or harm “after all other measure(s) of independent evasion and escape have failed and the evader(s) or escapee(s) consider(s) assistance vital to survival.”

At some point on January 27, as Davis traveled through Lahore, he came in contact with the men on the motorcycle, twenty-two-year-old Faizan Haider and twenty-six-year-old Faheem Shamshad, also known as Muhammad Faheem. According to the US version of events, the two men scoped out Davis as he stopped at an ATM to withdraw money and then put in place a plan to rob him. But according to four Pakistani sources who spoke to ABC News shortly after the incident, the two men were actually working for the ISI and began tracking Davis after he had crossed “a red line.” Days before the incident, Davis “was asked to leave an area of Lahore restricted by the military,” according to ABC’s sources. “His cell phone was tracked, said one government official, and some of his calls were made to the Waziristan tribal areas, where the Pakistani Taliban and a dozen other militant groups have a safe haven. Pakistani intelligence officials saw him as a threat who was ‘encroaching on their turf,’” an official said. “Yes, they belonged to the security establishment,” a Pakistani security official told Karachi’s Express Tribune newspaper. “[T]hey found the activities of the American official detrimental to our national security.” Complicating all of this, other Pakistani officials emphatically denied the men were ISI.

Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer said he heard credible reports from his colleagues who work on Pakistan that the two men were in fact ISI. “They were just going to pick him up and make a point, ‘We know who you are,’” Shaffer said. Because Davis had not been declared as CIA to the ISI, “they were gonna make the point to say, ‘We know you’re here.’”

“I know a lot more about this than I can say, unfortunately,” Shaffer added. “It suffices to say that the Davis issue was prompted by the ISI, there was a provocation, there was a reason why Davis reacted the way he did and this gamesmanship had gotten to the point where CIA was basically being trailed by the very folks they’re working with.”

Which “red line” Davis crossed, if in fact that is what prompted the two men to track him, may never be known. Perhaps it involved getting too close to Lashkar-e-Taiba. Perhaps he was working to expose its ties to the ISI. Maybe he was scouting targets for the Agency’s drone bombings. Some suggested that Davis was the CIA’s new chief of station. Some Pakistani officials went so far as to offer up a wild conspiracy theory that Davis was actually working with the Taliban and other militant groups to plan attacks on civilian targets that could be blamed on terrorists. It was a common allegation hurled at Blackwater in places like Peshawar, the capital of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and a central front in the covert US war in Pakistan. Despite the incendiary nature of these allegations, no evidence was ever produced to back up any of these charges. “The Lahore killings were a blessing in disguise for our security agencies who suspected that Davis was masterminding terrorist activities in Lahore and other parts of Punjab,” a senior Punjab police official alleged, adding that Davis had “close ties” with the Pakistani Taliban. “Davis was instrumental in recruiting young people from Punjab for the Taliban to fuel the bloody insurgency.” Police officials said that the call logs from Davis’s phones showed records of links with more than thirty Pakistanis, including “27 militants” from the Taliban and the militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which is designated as a terrorist group by both the United States and Pakistan.

Other Pakistani government sources alleged that Davis was in the country and known to the ISI and had been authorized to work on a CIA program conducting surveillance of al Qaeda and the Taliban. “Davis’s job was to trail links of the Taliban and al Qaeda in different parts of Pakistan,” a source told the Tribune. “But, instead, investigators found that he had developed close links” with the Taliban. “The government and security agencies were surprised to know that Davis and some of his colleagues were involved in activities that were not spelled out in the agreement.” The mainstream Pakistani conspiracy theories on Davis suggested that the American operative was setting up false flag bombings to force the Pakistani government to take a more aggressive approach toward militant groups or to give the impression that the country’s nuclear weapons were not secure. No evidence was ever presented to support these allegations.

The truth may never be known, but it is certainly possible that Davis was up to something with the Taliban and al Qaeda that Pakistan did not like and the US government would never want to acknowledge. “All countries conduct espionage,” asserted Colonel Patrick Lang. “In the course of that task in the ‘game of nations,’ some things are done in ‘liaison’ with a country’s service, in this case, the ISI, and others are not. They are done unilaterally, i.e., illegally in the country where they occur. If one does not do that, then one is vulnerable to the agenda of the ‘liaison’ service.” The US intelligence community, Lang argued, “is often accused of not really knowing what is ‘going on’ in a country. The way to avoid that is to do some things ‘unilaterally.’ In this case are the ISI irritated? I am sure they are. Do you think we believe that Pakistan does not operate ‘unilaterally’ in the US? If we do, then we are fools.”

In any event, given the programs Raymond Davis was known to have worked on, the US version of events and its characterization of him as a diplomat or a “technical adviser” or, as the New York Times characterized the US position: “a paper-shuffling diplomat who stamped visas as a day job,” are impossible to believe. Perhaps he was CIA. It is also possible that his CIA status was a cover within a cover and that, as my military intelligence source suggested, he was working with JSOC. “That’s common,” Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer told me. “It all gets mish-mashed together. The sad truth is,” Shaffer asserted, US officials, including ambassadors and policy makers not directly looped in to an operation, “don’t really know, what’s going on, anywhere. It all gets kind of blurred together.” Shaffer added that Davis’s cover was all about “Layering.” He said, “You always have a cover within a cover and it depends on how far you are trying to throw someone off, especially if you assume you are going to be rolled up at some point in time. You always have throwaways.”

It is not uncommon for CIA operatives to work under cover as diplomats. It is standard operating procedure for many nations. The RAO, where Davis said he worked, was a common cover for US spies. Everyone who needed to know was aware of such cover arrangements. When an operation goes south, it usually does not play out in public. Discreet arrangements are made, and sometimes prisoners are exchanged or payoffs authorized. It is all part of the spy game. But this particular incident occurred in broad daylight, in a crowded intersection, with scores of eyewitnesses.

If Davis had been revealed to be working for JSOC in Pakistan, that would have been the scenario most offensive to the ISI. After Obama’s 2008 election, while Pakistan’s government tried to curb the flow of CIA operatives into the country, the United States began increasing the number of covert personnel it allowed “cover” as diplomats. The ISI had long dealt with the CIA, but JSOC was an entirely different beast, one the ISI would find terrifying.

In addition to being the lead agency in US targeted killing operations, JSOC was also the premier US entity responsible for counterproliferation. In Pakistan, theories that the United States was plotting to snatch the country’s nuclear weapons were rampant and the source of endless commentary on its news channels. The idea wasn’t just paranoia. JSOC had in fact drawn up plans to secure Pakistan’s nukes in the event of a coup or other destabilization. In the late 1990s, it was revealed that plans existed for JSOC to be prepared to deploy anywhere across the globe “to recover sensitive NBC [nuclear, biological, chemical] materials in the hands of terrorist groups, to slip undetected into rogue countries to gain evidence of a secret WMD development program, to sabotage such a program, and to detect, disarm, disable, or seize WMD.” While such plans were hardly unique to Pakistan, they fueled the ISI’s obsession with JSOC.

Former Pakistani brigadier F. B. Ali described two phases of JSOC’s operations in Pakistan, the first being the “hot pursuit” arrangement with JSOC dating back to President Musharraf’s time. “The second phase of the JSOC influx occurred after the US decided to undertake a large, long-term aid program for Pakistan,” Ali observed. “The US applied for visas for a large number of staff and support personnel to manage the program. The ISI insisted on security vetting all visa applicants, which held up the process. The US exerted huge pressure on the government, warning that the aid program would be adversely affected.” Pakistan’s government, Ali alleged, acquiesced and allowed a large flow of Americans into Pakistan. That claim was backed up by an ISI official who claimed thousands of visas had been issued to US Embassy personnel over a five-month period leading up to the Davis incident, “following a government directive to the Pakistan Embassy in Washington to issue visas without the usual vetting by the interior ministry and the ISI.” According to an Associated Press report in late February 2011, “Within two days of receiving that directive, the Pakistani Embassy issued 400 visas and since then thousands more have been issued.” In all, according to the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, more than 3,500 visas were issued to US diplomats, military personnel and employees of “allied agencies” in 2010.

At the time of the Davis incident, Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry stated that there were 851 Americans with diplomatic immunity in Pakistan, 297 of whom were not working “in a diplomatic capacity.” But the Interior Ministry listed more than four hundred “special Americans,” suspected by Pakistani security officials to be “operatives of US intelligence agencies who are on covert missions in Pakistan, reporting to” JSOC. “The ‘official’ version of what they are doing is gathering counter-terrorism intelligence,” Brigadier Ali asserted. “But the ISI rank and file knew otherwise; they just couldn’t get the dominant US-friendly brass to do anything about it. Until Raymond Davis gunned down a couple of ISI auxiliaries on the streets of Lahore, and the US publicly came down like a ton of bricks to get him freed.”

Whatever Davis was doing and for whom he was doing it prior to pulling up at the Mozang Chowk intersection in Lahore on January 27, 2011, what happened that day was straight out of a spy movie.

At some point, Davis pegged the two guys on the motorcycle in front of him as a threat. As he told it, one of the men brandished a firearm in a menacing way. Davis grabbed his Glock 9 and fired five shots through his front windshield, with deadly precision, taking down Muhammad Faheem, who was on the back of the bike. One shot hit him in the head, just above his ear. Another pierced his stomach. The driver of the motorcycle, Faizan Haider, hopped off the bike and started to flee. Davis, Glock in hand, stepped out of his car, aimed and fired five more shots. Haider fell thirty feet from his motorcycle. At least two shots hit him in the back. He later died in the hospital.

According to eyewitnesses, after shooting the two men, Davis returned calmly to his vehicle and took out a military-grade radio. He called for backup. Before getting back into his vehicle, onlookers in the crowded intersection watched as Davis walked over to the blood-soaked bodies of the two men he had shot and photographed them. As crowds began to descend on the streets, the potential for a mob forming was strong. Traffic police called out for Davis to stop. He ignored them, got back in his car—the windshield riddled with the bullet holes made by his own Glock—and sped off. In the meantime, a Toyota Land Cruiser was speeding through the streets of Lahore. Its license plate, bearing the tag LZN-6970, was a fake. The driver of Davis’s backup vehicle was not about to wait in congested traffic. He punched it, hopping onto the median of a crowded road, and then darted into incoming traffic, weaving the vehicle toward Mozang Chowk. About five hundred yards from the intersection where the shooting happened, the Land Cruiser slammed into the motorcycle of a Pakistani man, Ibadur Rehman, crushing him, and then continued on toward the scene. After discovering that Davis was already gone, the men in the Land Cruiser fled.

By the time his backup vehicle arrived, Davis had made it two miles from Mozang Chowk. But the chase ended swiftly. He was confronted by local police at a crowded market in Old Anarkali in Lahore. Davis put up no resistance and was taken into custody. He worked for the US government, Davis told them. His seven-week ordeal was just beginning. While Davis was on his way to a Punjab police station for questioning, the men on his backup team were making their getaway. Somewhere near Faletti’s Hotel, several items fell from their vehicle, among them four ammunition clips, 100 bullets, a black mask, a knife with a compass and a piece of fabric emblazoned with an American flag—another blood chit. They returned to the CIA-JSOC safe house, destroyed all government documents in their possession and headed for the US Consulate. The men inside that vehicle were never heard from nor seen again in Pakistan. The United States, claiming they had diplomatic immunity, whisked them out of the country before the Pakistanis could question them. “They have flown the coop, they are already in America,” a senior Pakistani official remarked.

It took less than twenty-four hours for word of the incident to spread like wildfire through Pakistan. In Lahore, angry mobs of protesters called for Davis to be hanged. Reports began emerging in the Pakistani press that Davis was CIA and a Blackwater agent. As he stood inside Lahore’s Lytton Road Police Station, chaos surrounded the calm American. Police officers, investigators and others in the room spoke to one another heatedly. They stumbled to pronounce his name. Davis insisted that they find his passport. He insisted he was a consultant at the consulate in Lahore and that he had a diplomatic passport. Unlike his colleagues who had gotten themselves in trouble in Pakistan in the months before the shooting in Lahore, Davis would not be going home anytime soon. He was transferred to Kot Lakhpat Jail as Pakistani authorities intensified their investigation, including a forensic review of the crime scene. Autopsies were performed on the three dead men (the two shot by Davis and the man who was run down by his backup team) before their bodies were handed over to their families for burial.

According to the Pakistani police investigation, Davis’s claim that he fired in self-defense “is not correct.” The postmortem report indicated that both men who were killed by Davis were shot from behind. Witnesses told the Pakistani police that Haider was gunned down as he ran from the motorcycle “to save his life.” Davis told the police that Faheem had cocked his weapon and aimed it at him. When police recovered Faheem’s weapon, “the chamber of the deceased’s pistol [was] empty and the bullets were in the magazine.” Moreover, according to police, “no one saw them aiming at” Davis. When police asked Davis for a license for his weapons, they said he couldn’t produce one. To the Punjab police, the incident quickly became a murder investigation. Davis was ordered held for six days, pending further investigation.

The particulars of the incident were not nearly as important as the high-stakes game that would play out between the United States and Pakistan. Unbeknownst to the Pakistani government, five months before Raymond Davis was taken into custody, US intelligence had made a discovery of potentially incalculable value. The CIA had located a courier linked to Osama bin Laden. They tracked his movements, which ultimately led them to a large house in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Using satellite imagery, intelligence analysts noticed the movements of a mysterious figure inside the compound. The White House believed it had found bin Laden. Just as Admiral McRaven began gaming out scenarios JSOC could use to kill or capture the al Qaeda leader, Davis had shot the men in Lahore and now sat in a Pakistani jail. The United States feared that if it raided the house in Abbottabad, Davis could be killed in retaliation for the violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. Washington had to get its man out of there.

Unaware of the US planning to go after what Washington believed was bin Laden’s home inside Pakistan, the government in Islamabad viewed the Davis incident as an opportunity to win the upper hand in its intelligence wars with the United States. “For the ISI, the Davis incident is a godsend,” an editorial in the Economist concluded. “It is furious with the way American agents work independently, tracking al-Qaeda, Taliban and other militants who have slipped into Lahore and Karachi to flee drone attacks on the mountainous border with Afghanistan.”

The US government’s response to Davis’s arrest was clumsy. It is entirely possible that Davis’s actual role in Pakistan—whether CIA, JSOC or both—was not fully known by the US Embassy. The day after Davis was arrested, a spokesman for the US Embassy in Islamabad, Alberto Rodriguez, told a Pakistani television station, “I can confirm that the person that’s involved in the incident is an employee of the consulate.” Soon after, on January 27, the US Embassy sent a diplomatic note to the Pakistani Foreign Ministry claiming Davis as “an employee of U.S. Consulate General Lahore and holder of a diplomatic passport.” That was consistent with the statement Davis gave to police. The problem for the United States, however, was that this designation meant that the Pakistani authorities could argue that he was not entitled to full immunity but was instead covered by the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. That treaty provided that “Consular officers shall not be liable to arrest or detention pending trial, except in the case of a grave crime and pursuant to a decision by the competent judicial authority.” Surely, the Pakistanis argued, murder is a grave crime.

On February 3, the United States revised its position. This time, it labeled Davis “a member of the administrative and technical staff of the U.S. embassy.” According to Pakistani officials, Davis had never been certified as a diplomat because of “unresolved queries” about him made by Pakistan to the United States.

Rage was spreading across the country. Ten days after the shooting, in a hospital bed in Faisalabad, Shumaila Kanwal, Faheem’s widow, was using her last breaths to record a video statement. She had swallowed rat poison and was ending her own life to protest what she called her husband’s murder at the hands of a US agent. “I want blood for blood,” she said as she gasped for air and struggled to focus her eyes. “The way my husband was shot, his killer should be shot in the same fashion.” Imran Haider, the brother of the other man shot by Davis, said his brother had recently learned that his wife was pregnant. He expressed anger that his brother was being “smeared” as a bandit. “He was clean,” he declared. “All we want is for this American to go on trial and for a proper investigation to be done. He should face the death penalty. No deals.”

Shumaila died shortly after her statement was recorded. Her death further inflamed the already outraged Pakistani public. Islamic parties staged huge demonstrations, burning effigies of Davis and declaring him a terrorist, a spy and, perhaps worst of all, an agent of Blackwater.

It soon became clear that Pakistan was not going to quietly release Davis. The United States began a feverish campaign to get him out. The CIA went so far as to cease its drone bombings in the country, reportedly at the request of the ISI. That the United States halted the drone attacks was remarkable, given their centrality to the US strategy in Pakistan. “The arrest of this guy is a very positive thing for us,” declared Mullah Jihad Yar, a Pakistani Taliban commander. “Our forces used to be hit by attacks every other day. Now we can move more freely.” For Agency veterans, US moves indicated how badly they wanted Davis sprung. “The Embassy/Station wants Davis back because they don’t want him to start talking about whatever else they are up to unilaterally,” Giraldi, the former CIA officer, suggested. As for the issue of immunity, Giraldi asserted that Davis did not have it. “To be a diplomat legally speaking you have to be accredited to the foreign ministry of the country and they have to accept your accreditation. You are then entered on the diplomatic list,” he asserted. “Most US Embassy employees in most overseas posts do not have diplomatic status and therefore do not have immunity except insofar as the local government might extend some protections to them as a courtesy. There is absolutely no indication that Davis went through the accreditation procedure or anything like that even if he was traveling on a dip[lomatic] passport.”

As reports flooded the Pakistani press of Davis’s affiliation with the CIA, JSOC and Blackwater, major US media outlets and US government officials promoted the line that Davis was a diplomat. “We continue to make clear to the government of Pakistan that our diplomat has diplomatic immunity, in our view was acting in self-defense and should be released,” declared State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley in a February 7 statement that was reported by CNN, CBS, PBS, USA Today and other major news outlets. “Pakistan should fulfill its international obligations under the Vienna Convention.”

In response to pressure from Washington, the US-friendly government of Asif Zardari was preparing to recognize Davis as a diplomat but met resistance from its own officials. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, was asked to certify Davis as a diplomat but refused, saying the request did not match the “official record” on Davis at the Foreign Ministry. “Our expert opinion suggested that the blanket immunity the US embassy is asking for is unjustified,” he later said. In response, Secretary of State Clinton snubbed Qureshi at an international security conference in Munich, Germany. Qureshi was then swiftly removed as foreign minister, he charged, because of his “principled stance” against granting Davis immunity. In taking this position, Qureshi passed the issue to the courts in Lahore, ensuring that the Davis saga would continue. Leading US lawmakers threatened to withhold US humanitarian aid to Pakistan if Davis was not released. President Zardari called such threats “counterproductive,” writing in the Washington Post, “In an incendiary environment, hot rhetoric and dysfunctional warnings can start fires that will be difficult to extinguish.”

As Raymond Davis sat in his cell in the Kot Lakhpat Jail, US officials feared for his safety. As many as three prisoners had been murdered by guards in the facility. Some Pakistani officials expressed concern that the CIA would try a spectacular prison break. Davis’s food was tested for poison by dogs before being served to him. While his masters tried to free him, Davis remained cool and defiant. During an interrogation after the shooting, Davis, clean-shaven and wearing a blue pullover fleece, told his interrogator, “The US ambassador says I have [immunity], so I’m not answering any questions.” Davis demanded to see his passport. “Right on the front page,” he said, motioning his hands in a framing motion. “Diplomatic passport.” As the interrogator attempted to question him further, Davis announced he would not answer any more questions. “I’m going back to my room,” Davis told the man, then got up from the table. “You can’t go like this,” the interrogator declared. “You are not a diplomat.” Davis simply reiterated that he would not answer any more questions as he headed for the door.

Back in Washington, the full weight of the Obama administration was being thrown behind the cause of his freedom. “In our view, he acted in self-defense, when confronted by two armed men on motorcycles,” Crowley declared at the State Department. He “had every reason to believe that the armed men meant him bodily harm.” He demanded Davis’s release.

On February 15, with Davis still in jail and a Pakistani judge preparing to rule on whether he was entitled to immunity, Senator John Kerry, chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, arrived in Pakistan. Kerry was well known in Pakistan as the co-sponsor of a massive $7.5 billion aid package to the country. Kerry met with President Zardari and other top officials, and then with a group of Pakistani journalists in Lahore, where he made the case that Davis was a diplomat and should be released into US custody. “We have to—all of us—respect the law,” Kerry said, sitting in a lounge chair surrounded by the Pakistani media. Television networks in Pakistan carried his remarks live. The law governing diplomatic immunity, Kerry said, “is not a law that Pakistan idly signed up to. Your leaders signed up for this long, long ago.” Kerry spoke slowly, almost as though he were speaking to a class of children rather than journalists. “We didn’t create this. We live with it and it’s important for us to live with it because there are incidents that occur sometimes in one part of the world or another where diplomats are not able to do the job that they are called on to do in very dangerous circumstances sometimes unless they have that immunity.”

The journalists pressed Kerry on Davis’s status and asked why, in their eyes, it seemed the United States was not respecting Pakistan’s laws and judicial process. “It is the strong belief of our government that this case does not belong in the court. And it does not belong in the court because this man has diplomatic immunity as an administrative, technical employee of the embassy of the United States in Islamabad,” Kerry responded. “We believe the documentation makes that clear. That’s our position. We’re not disrespecting your court. We completely respect your courts. We want your courts to be strong and to be vibrant…but we have to respect international law.” Kerry called on Pakistan to “let the facts and let the reality speak for itself here.”

It is highly doubtful that John Kerry actually believed that Davis was an “administrative, technical employee of the embassy.” As chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry was privy to the most sensitive US intelligence and was thoroughly briefed before departing for Pakistan.

As Kerry worked Pakistani officials, back in Washington, President Obama very publicly owned Davis. “With respect to Mr. Davis, our diplomat in Pakistan, we’ve got a very simple principle here that every country in the world that is party to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations has upheld in the past and should uphold in the future. And that is if—if our diplomats are in another country, then they are not subject to that country’s local prosecution,” Obama declared at the White House. “If it starts being fair game on our ambassadors around the world, including in dangerous places where we may have differences with those governments…and they start being vulnerable to prosecution locally, that—that’s untenable. It means they can’t do their job.” Obama said the administration had been “very firm” in making the US demands to Pakistan clear and was working “to get this person released.” Obama added, “For those who aren’t familiar with the background on this, a couple of Pakistanis were killed in a incident between Mr. Davis within—in Pakistan. So, obviously, we’re concerned about the loss of life. You know, we’re not callous about that. But there’s a broader principle at stake that I think we have to uphold.”

While Obama, Kerry and other US officials publicly characterized Davis as a diplomat, several major US media outlets, most prominent among them the New York Times, had already learned that Davis was, in fact, working for the CIA. At the request of the Obama administration, the Times and other US outlets agreed to withhold that fact from their reporting on the case. The Times later reported that it agreed not to report Davis’s CIA connection after administration officials “argued that disclosure of his specific job would put his life at risk.” (The Associated Press also acknowledged that it learned that Davis was working for the CIA “immediately after the shootings,” but did not report it.) New York Times reports referred to Davis as an “American official” and described “the mystery about what Mr. Davis was doing with this inventory of gadgets” and the speculation it had sparked in the Pakistani media, even as the Times knew he was working for the CIA. “It’s one thing for a newspaper to withhold information because they believe its disclosure would endanger lives,” constitutional lawyer and journalist Glenn Greenwald observed. “But here, the U.S. Government has spent weeks making public statements that were misleading in the extreme—Obama’s calling Davis ‘our diplomat in Pakistan’—while the New York Times deliberately concealed facts undermining those government claims because government officials told them to do so. That’s called being an active enabler of government propaganda.”

The first major world media outlet to report the CIA connection was London’s Guardian newspaper. Both the CIA and Britain’s MI-5 pressured the paper not to publish the information. Ultimately, the paper went ahead with the story, publishing it in its February 21 edition. “We came to the view that his CIA-ness was a critical part of the story, bound to be a factor in his trial or in attempts to have him released,” Ian Katz, the Guardian’s deputy editor in charge of news, said. “The reasons we were given for not naming him were, firstly, that it may complicate his release—that is not our job. If he was held hostage other factors would kick in but he is in the judicial process. The other reason given by the CIA was that he would come to harm in prison.” Once the Guardian printed it, US media outlets were given permission by the CIA to publish it themselves. In its first story identifying Davis as CIA, the Times quoted George Little, a CIA spokesman: “Our security personnel around the world act in a support role providing security for American officials. They do not conduct foreign intelligence collection or covert operations.” In reality, the line between the Agency’s “security” guards and operatives was almost nonexistent after a decade of operating together in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Senator Kerry held secret talks with Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, where they discussed the United States paying “blood money” to the families of Davis’s victims and the man run over by his backup team. While the CIA and ISI waged a war through media leaks and accusations, both the US and Pakistani governments knew that Davis would be released. The question was when and what the ISI would get from the CIA before that happened. In mid-February, after Davis had been in custody for two weeks, CIA director Panetta talked to ISI chief Pasha, who demanded that the United States identify “all the Ray Davises working in Pakistan, behind our backs.” Following that discussion, the ISI agreed to help facilitate and support a plan to pay off the victims’ families, paving the way for Davis’s release.

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee a day after Kerry’s visit to Pakistan, Panetta called the CIA’s relationship to the ISI “one of the most complicated relationships that I’ve seen in a long time.” A few days later, the Associated Press obtained the draft of a statement that the ISI was preparing that indicated that the ISI “is ready to split with the CIA because of its frustration over what it calls heavy-handed pressure and its anger over what it believes is a covert U.S. operation involving hundreds of contract spies.” The statement, which was never released, declared that following the Davis shooting, “Post-incident conduct of the CIA has virtually put the partnership into question…. It is hard to predict if the relationship will ever reach the level at which it was prior to the Davis episode,” adding bluntly: “The onus of not stalling this relationship between the two agencies now squarely lies on the CIA.”

In late February, Davis was hauled into a Lahore courtroom and asked to sign a charge sheet, acknowledging he had “murdered” the two men. Davis refused to sign and repeated his contention that he had immunity. In the meantime, the ISI was combing through the paperwork from the visa applications of hundreds of Americans issued visas over the previous six months. The ISI claimed that Davis’s application contained “bogus references and phone numbers” and was looking for similar red flags in other visa files.

On February 25, police in Peshawar arrested another US security contractor, Aaron DeHaven, whose company, Catalyst Services, boasted that its team had “been involved in some of the most significant events of the last 20 years, whether it was the breakup of the former Soviet Union, the US effort in Somalia, or the Global War on Terror” and that its members had “careers in the United States Military and the United States Department of Defense.” The Pakistani press immediately branded him a Davis-like spy. Reports soon appeared that dozens of “contractors” had fled the country.

The Pakistani government had to be seen as cracking down, and the United States was resigned to let it do so as long as it resulted in Davis’s freedom. The CIA’s George Little said that the Agency’s ties to the ISI “have been strong over the years, and when there are issues to sort out, we work through them. That’s the sign of a healthy partnership.” Despite the CIA’s public declarations, that partnership was, in reality, at an all-time low. But for the US military, the stakes were too high to let the Davis affair get any more out of hand. America’s war in Afghanistan was entirely dependent on Pakistan’s cooperation. Without Islamabad’s support, crucial US supply routes would be shut down. The generals had had enough.

ON FEBRUARY 23, the closing act to the Davis saga was initiated far away from the jail where the American sat awaiting his fate. In fact, the deal was sealed in neither Pakistan nor the United States, but at a secluded luxury beach resort in Muscat, the capital of Oman, a nation in the Arabian Peninsula. “Where do you go to think seriously and bring sanity to a maddening situation? Far from the madding crowd to a peaceful Omani luxury resort of course. So that’s what the military leadership of the US and Pakistan did,” declared a Pakistani military readout of the meeting. In a private conference room, the most powerful figures in the US military met with their Pakistani counterparts. Led by Admiral Mullen, the US delegation included Admiral Eric Olson, the commander of the US Special Operations Command; General David Petraeus; and General James Mattis, the commander of CENTCOM. They met with Pakistan’s top military official, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and Major General Javed Iqbal, its director general of military operations. “The US-Pakistan relationship is heading downhill as speculation mounts about US intentions in Pakistan,” the Pakistani readout stated. “The Davis affair brought all these suspicions to the surface.”

Referring to the reported rift between the CIA and ISI, the readout indicated that the US military officials “had to point out that once beyond a tipping point the situation would be taken over by political forces that could not be controlled.” According to the readout, the US delegation asked the Pakistani generals “to step in and do what the governments were failing to do—especially because the US military was at a critical stage in Afghanistan and Pakistan was the key to control and resolution.” It concluded, “The militaries will now brief and guide their civilian masters and hopefully bring about a qualitative change in the US-Pakistan Relationship by arresting the downhill descent and moving it in the right direction.”

After the Oman meeting, sources within the ISI said that the CIA had agreed not to conduct unilateral operations in Pakistan in return for its support in freeing Davis. “They will do nothing behind our backs that will result in people getting killed or arrested,” a Pakistani official told the Guardian. That of course was not true. It is even unclear whether the CIA said it. The New York Times reported that US officials “insisted…the CIA made no pledges to scale back covert operations in Pakistan or to give the Pakistani government or its intelligence agency a roster of American spies operating in the country—assertions that Pakistani officials disputed.”

In any case, the United States and Pakistan began putting together a plot to use Islamic Sharia law to free Davis. From the moment Davis shot the two men in Lahore, the families of his victims and the third man killed by his backup team publicly insisted that they wanted no payments or bribes, but rather wanted Davis tried and hanged. On her deathbed, Shumaila Kanwal, Faheem’s widow, said she feared that justice would not be served because of a political deal. For weeks, mobs of angry protesters demonstrated at every court hearing, demanding that Davis be charged and tried. For both the United States and Pakistan, that was not an option.

The show had gone on long enough. And its ending was carefully choreographed by both governments. Under the diyyat provision of Sharia law, the families of a victim could “pardon” the accused and in return accept a payment commonly referred to as “blood money.” That would result in the criminal case against Davis being dismissed. But it required the consent of the victims’ families.

On March 16, unidentified Pakistani agents forcibly took nineteen of the victims’ family members to Kot Lakhpat Jail. It was to be the day of Raymond Davis’s trial. The public was not allowed in, nor were reporters. Davis was, according to Punjab law minister Rana Sanaullah, charged with murder. But instead of witnessing the presentation of evidence, the testimony of eyewitnesses or the questioning of Davis, the family members were ordered to sign papers pardoning the American. “I and my associate were kept in forced detention for hours,” claimed an attorney for the family of Faizan Haider. Each of the family members was brought before the judge and asked if he or she pardoned Davis. Under intense pressure, all of them answered yes. The judge then dismissed the case against Davis and ordered his release. “This all happened in court and everything was according to law,” Sanaullah declared. “The court has acquitted Raymond Davis. Now he can go anywhere.” As retired Pakistani Brigadier F. B. Ali observed, “The diyyat provision is much loved by the rich and powerful in Muslim societies where it is in force; it literally allows them to get away with murder.”

In all, the families were paid a total of $2.3 million. On a visit to Cairo, Secretary of State Clinton praised the arrangement. “The families of the victims of the January 27th incident pardoned Mr. Davis, and we are very grateful for their decision,” she said. “We appreciate the actions that they took that enabled Mr. Davis to leave Pakistan and head back home.” When asked about the payments to the families, she replied, “The United States did not pay any compensation.” Pakistan had in fact made the payment, which the United States would later repay out of the CIA’s budget.

As Raymond Davis walked from the court after his release was ordered, tears streamed down his face as his victims’ families sat in stunned silence, some of them whimpering. Davis was swiftly escorted to a convoy of diplomatic vehicles and taken immediately to an airfield where he boarded a “special” plane—the type used in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program. The plane crossed into Afghanistan’s airspace, headed for Bagram, and Davis disappeared. “He’s gone,” Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer said, smiling.

Twenty-four hours after Davis was freed, a US drone strike killed some forty people in North Waziristan. Things, it seemed, could now go back to the way they were before l’affaire Davis. But just six weeks after Davis was whisked from Pakistan, the secret war he had been helping to fight would be thrust to front-page news the world over when JSOC helicopters penetrated Pakistani territory in the dead of night and headed for the garrison town of Abbottabad. Their mission: to kill the most wanted man in the world.