ISI a rogue agency run by Army chief,says A Q Khan

Khan said he had voiced criticism of the performance of our intelligence agencies when then premier Nawaz Sharif held a meeting of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet on May 13,1998 to discuss Pakistans options in the wake of Indias first three nuclear tests.

Despite their claims of having informants in almost every house in Pokhran,and their promises that they would inform us if India made any preparations for tests,we were caught unawares, Khan said.

If we had had as little as 10 days notice,we could have prepared a matching response and could have detonated our devices in as little as an hour, he wrote. Khan said he,then Foreign Minister Gauhar Ayub Khan and then Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmed Khan were quite vocal about conducting nuclear tests.

In a scathing attack on the ISI,Khan said it was being used against politicians and as a extended arm of the dictators. He said,this had led to all the coups staged in the country, since the military takeover by late dictator Ayub Khan. In our country performance of intelligence agencies is anything but commendable. They have been the extended arm of dictators and been branded as rogue organisations, he wrote.

Referring to a case in the Supreme Court about 11 missing terror suspects who are believed to be in the custody of intelligence agencies,Khan wrote the episode more or less confirms the universal belief that our intelligence agencies are rogue agencies and are above the law and the Constitution.

Khan wrote that during the regime of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf,a general,an ISI colonel and eight subordinates forcibly sent us to Bannigala (near Islamabad) and kept us there for 10 hours. He added,During that time our house was ransacked,bedrooms,clothes,books,files,etc,searched and many things taken all this without any official warrant or court order. He claimed his house was bugged.