Obama administration officials have told the New York Times that senior officials of the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, ordered the killing of Pakistani journalist Saleem Shahzad of the Asia Times in an effort to silence him. One U.S. official said, “Every indication is that this was a deliberate, targeted killing that was most likely meant to send shock waves through Pakistan’s journalist community and civil society.” Ali Dayan Hasan, the head of Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, first tied the ISI to Shahzad’s killing. Hasan recently spoke to Democracy Now! in his most extended interview in the U.S. press.

Hasan told Democracy Now!: “Saleem Shahzad investigated [and] wrote about al-Qaeda and the Taliban and that whole terrain of counter-terrorism and terrorism in Pakistan. What he basically concentrated a lot on were links between Pakistani intelligence and military on the one hand, and elements of al-Qaeda and Taliban on the other. And infiltration both ways but particularly in Pakistani intelligence structures and military structures including the navy air force and the military itself the army itself.”

Ali Dayan Hasan from our June 29, 2011 broadcast:

Part two of our conversation with Ali Dayan Hasan: