Since his appointment to Pakistan’s pre-eminent intelligence post in March, General Islam has maintained a conspicuously low profile in Pakistan. After being featured in a handful of newspaper articles filled with starchy compliments typically reserved for powerful generals, he largely disappeared from view —by most accounts, a deliberate strategy.

Long feared as a blunt instrument of army power, the ISI has undergone unusual turmoil over the past 12 months. The Bin Laden raid, which took place under the ISI’s nose, dented its prestige among the public and, equally important, inside the army. The killing of an investigative journalist, Syed Saleem Shahzad, widely viewed as an ISI job, brought international condemnation.

In politics, General Islam’s predecessor, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, had became embroiled in a political crisis that at one point threatened to bring down President Asif Ali Zardari’s government.

And the Supreme Court, headed by a strong-willed judge, has raised difficult questions about the ISI role in numerous human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions, and a multimillion-dollar election-rigging campaign that the agency ran in the early 1990s.

“There’s been a lot of commotion,” said Kamran Bokhari, an analyst with the research group Stratfor. “So now it makes sense for General Islam to pull back, reassess, see where things are going.”

In contrast with General Pasha, who was known for his sharp-tongued, sometimes impassioned private outbursts, General Islam is described as a low-profile operator, happy to take a back seat in meetings. “He is cool as a cucumber,” said a serving ISI officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.

But he has maintained General Pasha’s short rein on C.I.A. activities in Pakistan.

One senior American official says the ISI now treats its American counterparts with deep hostility. C.I.A. visas are frequently refused, and its officials are periodically stopped and searched. Meanwhile, Pakistani employees of the American Embassy and consulates have come under intense intimidation: subjected to strip searches, kept in prison for weeks, induced to “turn” against America, and sometimes threatened with weapons, the official said.