The ISI — Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency — was the CIA’s principal counterterrorism partner during John Kiriakou’s 2002 posting as chief of counterterrorism operations in Pakistan.
Two parallel ISIs
Per Kiriakou, the ISI was really two organizations. One was the counterterrorism units he worked with directly — “these guys were heroes. They were all trained at Sandhurst in the UK. They had taken classes in the US sponsored by the FBI. Their English was as good as mine.” The other was “another ISI made up of people with long beards who gave you a dirty look when you were walking the halls” — the elements that had created Kashmiri terrorist groups such as Jaish-e-Mohammed, blew up Shia mosques, and attacked Americans.[1][2][3] Kiriakou has drawn the same distinction in other interviews: the counterterrorism officers he dealt with, educated in the US and UK, cooperated well, while a separate faction at ISI headquarters — long beards, “stink eye” — were the ones who had built and armed the Taliban and Kashmiri separatist groups.[4] He also says he believes the ISI knew where Osama bin Laden was the entire time and was effectively protecting him — a belief consistent with, though distinct from, his account of hiding Abu Zubaydah’s identity from ISI below.[5]
”Mr. Fish”
Because of this divided loyalty, the CIA never told the ISI the identity of its high-value targets, fearing word would leak back to al-Qaeda. When hunting Abu Zubaydah, they referred to him only as “a big fish,” which became “Mr. Fish”: “We believe that Mr. Fish is at this location. Let’s send teams and snatch him.”[6][1]
The Mumbai attacks
Kiriakou says the ISI’s links to Kashmiri separatist groups were behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks. He went on the air as the only commentator to attribute the attacks to Pakistani Kashmiri separatist groups supported by the ISI — which proved correct, to the point that ABC News ran commercials noting it had been the only outlet to get it right.[7]