Dianne and David, the double-D duo from DC crippled Zardari and his predecessor "double-dealer" Musharraf with their damning revelations. Musharraf in turn pelted us with scenes of invisible raiders infiltrating the Pakistan Army and the ISI. Phew! We need the sleuthhound John le Carré to make sense of this crazy storyline where all these four characters appear to be counterfeiting. Don't be surprised if D Feinstein and D Sanger are portrayed as villains. The British former spymaster-turned-espionage novelist hates America and calls their drone attacks "a blood sacrifice." Wonder which role le Carré will cast the retired general in?

Dianne Feinstein, 77, chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill. She knows Pakistan like the back of her hand; her hostility against us (check the archives) from the time she became a senator in 1992 jumps out like a boxer never taking off her gloves. Not surprisingly then, the senator puckishly disobliged the Zardari-government by announcing that the pilotless predators/reapers take off from bases in Pakistan. The CIA kept mum. Her press secretary Philip J LaVelle scrounged up a lame excuse cartoonishly saying she was merely quoting from a newspaper report. Oh really? Dianne is not a dumb blonde. Nor is she a spring chicken. She's been in the intelligence game for far too long to be called a "blabbermouth." I would go along with this blogger in Washington Times, who writes: "DiFi (Dianne Feinstein) doesn't think it is fair that terrorists...er I mean Islamic freedom fighters don't have nukes like we (US) do. So she said what she did to undermine the Pakistani government to enable terrorists to get their hands on nukes. Let's call it the Fairness Doctrine. Either she wants Pakistan to fall under Al Qaeda's reign or she's stupid!"

What we are forgetting in our frenzy is that perhaps DiFi was asked to insert this information by her intelligence handlers. Why? You'll have to wait for another howler from her.

The second 'D' as in David Sanger is The New York Times Washington correspondent. I've been reading this guy for years. His reports are mostly Pakistan-centric and like DiFi damaging to Pakistan. Look up NY Times archives. David's obvious 'deep-throat' is J Michael McConnell, the former director of National Intelligence. Lawrence F Kaplan, another Pakistan-basher praises Sanger for his "knack of getting administration officials to leak like sieves, though he never advertises his access." Oh really? Sanger's book The Inheritance appears to be based on information culled from a swath of classified intelligence (including taped conversations of Musharraf and his ISI chief General Kayani) spread on the table for Sanger to cherry pick.
Described by Sanger as "pale, a bit stooped because of a bad back, and wearing wire-rim glasses," McConnell, 65, met Musharraf several times in Islamabad last year. Back in Washington the spymaster or his office apparently gave the author a blow by blow account of these meetings. Sanger subjunctivized reality by making Musharraf into a double-agent, simultaneously working for the Americans and the Taliban. "The country was ripe for the picking: Its weak, corrupt government faced national bankruptcy, an insurgency was at the doorstep of the capital, and the Pakistani government (Musharraf) had no comprehensive strategy to confront either threat. Nor did it seem to want one," writes Sanger in his book. Barack Obama, as yet not president, receives this intelligence briefing from McConnell last September on Pakistan.

Now to the MQ-9 Reapers airport controversy: "My understanding is that they are taking off from two places...one in Afghanistan and the other in Pakistan," says an American reporter. Over lunch, my anonymous friend tells me that CIA, US Air Force, Army, and the Navy all have their drones going for the kill. "I have heard them take off from Kandahar. They make a big racket as they gain altitude. Two hours later and 50,000 feet up in the sky, they fall silent, disappearing into space, hidden from the human eye but ready to fire."

The pilots sitting in a cluster of camouflaged trailers at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas fly these Reapers hunting down the Taliban 8,000 miles away. Underground and underwater fibre-optic cables link these trailers to Europe, where a satellite dish makes the connection directly to every Reaper in the air over the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Here's a teaser for our Musharraf-punching-TV gasbags: "Who the hell is he to defend the Army?" they howled. Gentlemen wake up and smell the coffee. Perhaps he had the blessings of generals Kayani and Pasha!



The writer is a freelance journalist with over twenty years of experience in national and international reporting. Email: aniaz@fas.harvard.edu