” ‘The Contractor’ is not the story of one man called Raymond Davis who shot three Pakistanis in Lahore in 2011 and how he, literally, got away with murder. It is actually a story of love and hate between the US and Pakistan. It is the story of a forced marriage between the CIA and ISI, both intelligence agencies, which hasn’t ended in a divorce yet. Truth is, the two partners in the ongoing war against terror hate each other so much, but they can’t say goodbye for a variety of reasons.” Hamid Mir — Pakistani Journalist

Pakistan intelligence and security officials reacted angrily over the release of a memoir by former CIA contractor Raymond Davis. Follow us on Twitter: @INTEL_TODAY

According to Davies, his 2011 acquittal in a high-profile murder case was an arrangement between Pakistan and the US, not between individuals.

On January 27 2011, Davis opened fire on two armed men who stopped his car in Lahore.

“As soon as I saw the gun’s muzzle moving in my direction, I unclicked my seatbelt and started to draw the gun. In a matter of two or three seconds, the entire engagement, from the moment I saw the threat to the moment it had been eliminated, was over,” Mr Davis wrote.

The facts

The two men, Muhammad Faheem and Faizan Haider, were killed by five rounds each from Mr Davis’s Glock 17. A bystander died after being struck by a car rushing to save Mr Davis.

“The two men shot dead were said to be agents of Pakistan’s feared spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) who had been following Mr Davis, though this has never been confirmed. Police disputed Mr Davis’s claim that he had fired in self-defence, and investigators claimed that neither of the dead men’s weapons had a bullet in the chamber.”

NOTE: Shumaila, the widow of one of the three men killed by Davis, committed suicide in protest against the deal between the US and Pakistan that let Raymond Davis off, scot-free, in exchange for $2.43 million in blood money, or ‘diyat’, that was given to the three families of the victims.

Arrest and sudden release

Mr Davis was almost lynched in the street by a mob, his life saved by Pakistani policemen who ushered him away but then arrested him. He claims he was later tortured by ISI. Facing calls for his execution, he was abruptly released after 49 days under a deal thrashed out between the US and Pakistan. After $2.4 million was paid to his victims’ families, he was put on a plane to Afghanistan. “ISI orchestrated my exit,” he wrote, claiming that the US was desperate to free him before launching its raid to assassinate Osama bin Laden just six weeks later, in Abbottabad.

“I was not a CIA agent.”

To be sure, Raymond Davis has created a cocktail of truth and lies, setting off a storm of misunderstandings and misconceptions in Pakistan. “I was not a CIA agent,” is one famous line in the book, but what about the February 21, 2011 story in the ‘New York Times’ headlined “American held in Pakistan worked with CIA”. Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist Mark Mazzetti wrote in his book “The Way of The Knife” that US Ambassador in Pakistan Cameron Munter told Gen Pasha that Davis was CIA and the US wanted to get him out of Pakistan. [Hamid Mir] The Guardian of London first reported Davis’ CIA link and noted that many U.S. news outlets knew about his connection to the CIA but did not report on it at the request of U.S. officials.

The CIA

Davis claimed that he was not working for the CIA. But the book has been written like a typical CIA operator who tries to kill two birds with one stone. He gives credit for his release to Pasha and tries to discredit the ISI in the eyes of Pakistanis. Everyone knows that ‘The Contractor’ was cleared by the CIA.We also know from the co-author of this book, Storms Reback, that the CIA forced them to remove some important details in the name of safeguarding US interest. The authors agreed to accept CIA’s dictation because former CIA chief Leon Panetta also helped Raymond Davis in writing this book. The agency held back the manuscript for a long time. The book was supposed to come out in September 2016 but the CIA clearly didn’t want it to get lost in the noise of the US Presidential election campaign. [Hamid Mir]

Outrage in Pakistan

Imran Khan, the head of the Pakistan’s Tehreek-i-Insaaf party, tweeted on July 1 to say that:

“This book should be read by Pakistanis to understand why we are treated with little respect internationally”. “This book is a shameful account of how our top political and military leadership collaborated to let a cold blooded killer, responsible for 4 deaths, go scot-free”.

Former defence secretary Lt. Gen Naeem Khalid Lodhi was a witness to several events relating to the Raymond Davis crisis.

“They have tried to create a gulf between the Pakistan Army and the people of Pakistan through this Raymond Davis book. They want instability, not peace in this region. If there is peace, who will buy their weapons,” Gen. Lodhi said.

The Contractor: How I Landed in a Pakistani Prison and Ignited a Diplomatic Crisis

The man at the center of the controversy tells his side of the story for the very first time. In The Contractor: How I Landed in a Pakistani Prison and Ignited a Diplomatic Crisis, Davis offers an up-close and personal look at the 2011 incident in Lahore, Pakistan, that led to his imprisonment and the events that took place as diplomats on both sides of the bargaining table scrambled to get him out. How did a routine drive turn into front-page news? Davis dissects the incident before taking readers on the same journey he endured while trapped in the Kafkaesque Pakistani legal system. As a veteran security contractor, Davis had come to terms with the prospect of dying long before the January 27, 2011 shooting, but nothing could prepare him for being a political pawn in a game with the highest stakes imaginable. An eye-opening memoir, The Contractor takes the veil off Raymond Davis’s story and offers a sober reflection on the true cost of the War on Terror. [Amazon]

Arrest of CIA Agent Sheds Light on U.S. Covert War in Pakistan — Interview with Declan Walsh

U.S. officials have admitted an American detained in Pakistan for the murder of two men was a CIA agent and a former employee of the private security firm Blackwater, now called Xe Services. Up until Monday, the Obama administration had insisted Raymond Davis was a diplomat who had acted in self-defense. The arrest of Davis has soured relations between the United States and Pakistan and revealed a web of covert U.S. operations inside the country, part of a secret war run by the CIA. Democracy Now! interviews Declan Walsh, the Pakistan correspondent for The Guardian, who first broke the story.

REFERENCES

CIA man Raymond Davis’s memoir sparks fury in Pakistan — The Times

A story of love and hate between the CIA and ISI — The Indian Express

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Former CIA Operative’s Memoir Sparks Outrage in Pakistan