Pakistani Media Outs CIA Chief

Pakistan’s media has unveiled the name of the man who it says is the CIA's Islamabad station chief, and some say the Pakistani government is behind the leak. If that’s the case, it would mark the second outing of a CIA agent in Pakistan in six months and point to an increasingly strained relationship with the US in the wake of Osama bin Laden's death, the Wall Street Journal reports. The name was reported on Friday by a private TV station in a story about a meeting between the director of Pakistan's spy agency and the station chief.

The TV station said it had “one-plus” sources on the name, but didn’t reveal them. “If we did not mention the man's name, the credibility of the story would have been reduced,” said a rep. The name “has to have been released by some government agency,” said the editor of a right-wing newspaper. “Who else would know such information?" It could be Pakistan's "own little way of retaliating" for the raid, said a former US intelligence official. In December, a lawsuit in Pakistan revealed the name of the former station chief, prompting the US to remove him from the post. (More Pakistan stories.)