US officials believe that Pakistan deliberately leaked the name of Washington's top spy in the country, a further sign of deteriorating relations, the Washington Post reported Monday.
The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Islamabad station chief was outed to Pakistani media over the weekend, only six months after a similar leak disclosed the identity of his predecessor, DPA reported.
US officials suspect the disclosure was deliberate act by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, in retaliation for the US raid that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in his compound in the city of Abbottabad last week, the Post said.
Bin Laden's presence in Abbottabad came as an embarrassment for Pakistan's government and armed forces and lead to accusations that the intelligence services were either incompetent or complicit. The US raid caused outrage in the country.
The paper quoted a US official as saying while there was no hard evidence that the ISI was responsible for the outing, the suspicion was "based on past history," indicating that there was evidence that the Pakistani spies were behind the previous disclosure.
