One Pakistani newspaper claimed the agent entered the country on a business visa without diplomatic immunity. CIA officers sometimes pose as diplomats, in which case they usually cannot be prosecuted. In other cases they operate under "nonofficial cover," which exposes them to foreign legal action.
Though U.S. officials sometimes speak privately about the drone program in general, they tend not to discuss individual strikes. U.S. officials have acknowledged noncombatant deaths through drone strikes but say they are extremely rare.
Other groups challenge the U.S. count and say that as many as a third of the people killed in the strikes are not militants.
The government of Pakistan cooperates with the strikes, even though it sometimes denounces them to the public.
It has been a record year for drone strikes in Pakistan, with 113 so far, up from 53 last year and 34 in 2008, according to the New America Foundation. On Friday, U.S. missiles struck compounds in Pakistan's Khyber district, killing 54 alleged militants, according to news reports citing Pakistani officials.
The CIA post of Pakistan station chief is a crucial one because that station is the epicenter of the spy agency's program to attack militants with missiles fired from unmanned aerial drones. John D. Bennett, who in July was named to head the National Clandestine Service, the CIA's operations arm, had previously served as Islamabad station chief.
The outing of a station chief is rare but not without precedent.
Last year, an Italian prosecutor won convictions in absentia of 23 Americans, all but one allegedly CIA officers, in connection with the "extraordinary rendition" of an Egyptian cleric from Milan to Egypt in 2003. The cleric says he was tortured by the Egyptians. Among those convicted were former Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli and former Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady, whose names became public as a result of the court case.
ken.dilanian@latimes.com
alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
Dilanian reported from Washington and Rodriguez from Islamabad. Times staff writer Borzou Daragahi in Kabul contributed to this report.
