{EOP}CIA Spying Under USAID Cover, Fears NAB

ISLAMABAD: The National Accountability Bureau has unofficially conveyed its apprehensions to some leading security agencies of the country that certain USAID officials, apparently monitoring and executing development work in the tribal areas and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, are spying for the CIA.
Informed sources in the NAB confided to ‘The News’ that the Bureau’s chapter in KPK, which is investigating some corruption scandals pertaining to the USAID projects, has recently developed serious doubts about the “apparent role” and “real game” being played in the tribal areas in the name of development.
US Embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriquez, however, when contacted said that he has neither heard any such thing nor it is possible that the USAID officials are involved in any kind of espionage. There is no basis for such allegations, Alberto insisted.
Without the involvement of the Government of Pakistan or that of KPK, the USAID is directly executing through its choice NGOs including American organizations a number of schemes and projects in the tribal areas and in KPK province. The sources said that the NAB found some indications of the USAID officials having been allegedly involved in spying. This concern was shared with the ISI as the NAB sources said that the Bureau had no expertise or mandate to look into such an illegal activity of the foreign nationals.
Early this month apparently a US embassy official Raymond Davis, who had killed two Pakistanis, when apprehended by the police turned out to be a CIA agent. Although he was released and handover to the US in a shameful manner, the Raymond Davis episode turned relations between the CIA and the ISI extremely sour and it is said that the ISI is insisting on the Americans to recall all its covert agents like Raymond Davis and merely talk to the ISI where the CIA requires any intelligence support.
Washington is not prepared for this. Instead the US media of late revealed that the Central Investigation Agency (CIA) has already established its spy network in Pakistan and needs no assistance from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to carry out drone strikes in the tribal areas. Quoting unidentified US official, the report said that the CIA has established its spy network in the tribal areas in the last two years. After ‘The News’ broke in 2010 a scandal of corruption by some American NGOs involved by the USAID for different development projects and schemes, it was the USAID which had formally approached the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) to probe the scandalous work by the American NGOs.
The NAB is mainly conducting investigations against Academy for Educational Development (AED) for the past one year. According to one source, in order to protect USAID’s key officials in Pakistan, the USAID’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is wisely shifting the blame of alleged “serious corporate misconduct, mismanagement and a lack of internal controls” in FATA Livelihood Project (LDP) on to AED and its sub-contractors and contradicting the findings of their own Audit Report by the OIG published on USAID web site, dated December 2010.
The OIG, it is said, is completely ignoring its own responsibilities for not taking timely actions to prevent frauds in corrupt working environment of FATA, since inception of FATA LDP Project in 2008. The source said that in mid 2009, an investigation conducted out by internationally known Chartered Accountant firm “Earnest and Young” revealed that AED’s top managers Chief of Party (FATA LDP) Mr Phil Colgan (ex-Army Officer with expertise in Missil, Technology and having three nationalities. USA, British and Russian) and Sulaiman Sahibzada were involved in fraud and embezzlement in supply of Emergency Kits in FATA in nexus with some officials from USAID and AED’s head offices in USA. The self explanatory Audit Report of OIG has clearly put most of the responsibility onto USAID officials in Pakistan and their failure to prevent potential embezzlement in FATA LDP project and to maintain necessary oversight.
The OIG shifted the focus on to the infrastructure activities of FATA LDP as it was led by a brown skin Pakistani with USA citizenship, an easy prey for OIG instead of a blue-eyed Americans Phil Colgan and others at USAID Pakistan. Interestingly, even after finding the evidence of fraud committed by Phil Colgan, USAID rewarded him by posting him in Afghanistan as Chief of Party (COP). In Pakistan, OIG in a novel manner instructed AED to terminate all ongoing construction contracts.
The source said that the OIG continued to focus the investigation on the Pakistani members of the engineering team and registered a complaint with NAB (KP) against Salim Baz Khan and Pakistani team raising allegations of embezzlement in Barang Road project. It is pertinent to mention that NAB (KPK) has been conducting the subject inquiry for the past one year with Technical Support of a Sub-engineer from Irrigation Department (KP) and XEN from Frontier Highway Authority (FHA), Works and Services (C&W) Department (KP), all of which departments are well known for their institutionalized departmental corruption and are fabricating the desired results for NAB (KPK) to please the USAID/OIG, in the hope of getting favours and probably to get away from further investigations and actions against their own departmental staff by NAB (KPK).
The source insists that apart from USAID Mission’s officials, the OIG team is also responsible for not providing timely oversight and failed to monitor the performance of AED right form start of the FATA LDP. The OIG was supposed to conduct risk assessment, audits and site inspections of the FATA LDP Project and to take timely action to prevent fraud or embezzlement, instead, the source alleged, the OIG officials were busy in playing the “Spy Games” in FATA to compliment the overall efforts of US agencies. Now to justify the time and resources spent, the OIG desperately wants to file criminal cases against few selected engineers/ex-employees of LDP, using shoulders of NAB.
Source The News