US suspends 'all high-level dialogue' with Pakistan

[Jan Klimkowski]

The source of both Counterpunch and the Times of India that the two men gunned down by Raymond Davis were Pakistani ISI is anonymous but supposedly official Pakistani sources briefing American ABC News.

Perhaps predictably, the Times of India take the official "Pakistani sources" line that

intelligence officials saw Davis as a threat who was "encroaching on their turf," the official was quoted as saying.

Whilst Dave Lindorff in Counterpunch speculatively proposes another interpretation:

There have been several reports in the Pakistani press, unmentioned by Perlez, that the two men he killed were not, as initially reported by the US, petty thieves, but were actually agents working for Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI. Today, ABC's Nick Schifrin, who has been the best reporter on this story in the US corporate media, reports that while the State Department "adamantly denies" the claim (big surprise, that!), four Pakistani officials, off the record, have told ABC that the two men Davis killed were ISI agents assigned to tail Davis because he was a spy who had "crossed a red line."

What "red line?" Again there is speculation in Pakistan's media that Davis may have been involved in some kind of covert US program to actually finance or orchestrate some of the bombings that have been rocking, and destabilizing Pakistan. (Certainly that could explanation for the stop at the ATM for a bundle of cash, and for all of those cell phones recovered from Davis's car, which could serve nicely as bomb detonators--a popular method adopted by terrorists everywhere, though of course they could also have been dedicated lines or throwaways for "cutouts," as one veteran of such black-ops notes.)