This was bound to happen.Major Pakistani newspapers have been duped (or "made an offer they could not refuse") into printing headline stories based on false wikileaks cables that are extremely unflattering to India. And I am not surprised that the finest intelligence agency in the world was first with this new form of communication. btw, the pro-PPP website LUBP has investigated some of the operations used to disseminate intelligence agency propaganda and their expose is worth a read too..
1. Some of the editors at Jang Group (Pakistan's largest media empire) are so clueless that they cannot tell that such reports are obviously false
Or
2. They are in the pay of agencies and knowingly print lies.
I vote for option two, though option one also looks attractive..
Meanwhile, Ahmed Qureshi (himself a part of the Daily Mail/paknationalists combine highlighted in the expose at LUBP) has offered a defence of the fake cables story.
All the Pakistani papers, except one, who published the fake leaks have now apologized.
Posted by: Ruchira | December 11, 2010 at 12:57 AM
Interesting that Ahmed Qureshi hypes the fake cable story by defending it as based on an actual Daily Mail report bylined by 'mysterious' authors such as Suzie Wang (Washington?), Christina Palmer ( who according to an earlier article by Qureshi, may actually have been suspected spy Madhuri Gupta with a pseudonym), et al.
Maybe there will be a host of screenwriters chasing all these principals for rights to the movie version of the fake expose, Spy vs. Spy craziness. It might be more entertaining than Inception to sort out the logic of the whole scheme on the silver screen.
Posted by: Sujatha | December 11, 2010 at 07:29 AM
ISI continues to stand by its story: http://dailymailnews.com/1210/13/FrontPage/index.php?id=5
Posted by: omar | December 14, 2010 at 10:06 AM
But of course! The play book has not been revised and updated since Hamid Gul edited it.
Posted by: Ruchira | December 14, 2010 at 03:58 PM
So The Daily Mail will be the sole self-anointed purveyor of these 'Wikileaks', while the others who blared it in their headlines will have to stay decorously away. I'm sure that the owners of The Daily Mail must be laughing all the way to the bank.
Posted by: Sujatha | December 14, 2010 at 06:12 PM
The deadly game of tit-for-tat between the CIA and the ISI now at full tilt.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/18/world/asia/18pstan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
Posted by: Ruchira | December 17, 2010 at 10:15 PM
The game has always been at full tilt, but ISI is increasingly confident of victory, so a little more assertive...
Posted by: omar | December 18, 2010 at 04:01 PM