Until the abortive directive regarding the ISI, Gillani had made no visible effort to assert control over Pakistan's intelligence establishment, which helped create and arm the Taliban movement in the 1990s.
"Today, we are still suffering the blowback from having helped the Afghan Taliban," said analyst and author Ahmed Rashid, who has written extensively about Islamic militant groups in Pakistan. The new government had been unable to move aggressively to reverse ISI policies, he said.
Rehman and other Gillani aides suggested that the CIA had fed the White House outdated information about the ISI's ties to militants to put pressure on Pakistan's government to send more troops into the tribal areas.
"Some of this [information] is many, many months old," Rehman said.
A former ISI head, retired Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani, said he had no knowledge of involvement by agency operatives in planning the Indian Embassy attack. But he defended the agency's ties with militant Islamic groups.
"It's the nature of intelligence work," Durrani said. "To understand how these organizations operate, you always have to keep links with all kinds of groups, all the time. . . . Ask the CIA."
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laura.king@latimes.com
