Daily Beast Sources: Pakistan's Intelligence Chief Expected to Resign

The head of Pakistan's notorious intelligence service, the Inter-Service Intelligence agency, is expected to resign as fallout to the U.S.'s raid on Osama bin Laden's compound.

The Daily Beast reports:

To allay both domestic and international anger and dismay over the presence of Osama bin Laden in a military cantonment town close to the capital, senior Pakistani officials have told The Daily Beast they recognize that an important head has to roll and soon. They say the most likely candidate to be the fall guy is Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the director general of the country’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate. These high-level sources, who refused to be quoted or named, say that it’s nearly a done deal. Savvy Pakistani analysts who have close connections to the military agree. “It would make a lot of sense,” says retired Pakistani Lt. Gen. Talat Masood. “It’s in his (Pasha’s) personal and the national interest to take the heat off.”

The heat has been fierce. Whether they supported or loathed bin Laden, Pakistanis across the board are furious that the ISI and the powerful military, which control national security policy, could have been so incompetent not to know that the al Qaeda leader was comfortably holed up in Abbottabad, only 80 miles north of the capital. “Never before have the military and the ISI come under such criticism,” Masood says. People are also angry, if not embarrassed, that the military, which eats the lion’s share of the national budget and is seen as the country’s protector from invading forces, particularly neighboring India, could be totally unaware that American helicopters had violated Pakistani airspace.

Full story here.