Opinion | With CIA And Mossad, West Shouldn't Lecture Others On Espionage

On a blustery, cold January day in 2011 in Lahore, a CIA contractor and former US Special Forces operative was driving through a busy street when two motorcyclists who allegedly attempted to rob him—or that is what he claimed—were shot and killed by him. In the ensuing chaos, he hit another car, got caught and was promptly charged with murder. You might think this was a minor incident, but Washington didn't.

Davis was hardly a big fish in the CIA pond, yet the Obama administration threw a diplomatic tantrum generally typical of a superpower. Diplomatic relations and the $2 billion in annual aid to Pakistan were frozen. The US falsely claimed Davis was a diplomat, deserving immunity. Pakistan's investigation showed he was a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative and therefore wasn't covered by diplomatic immunity. Initially, it refused to back down despite the political heat.

In the end, after a 50-day standoff, Davis was whisked back to the US, but not before $2.34 million of blood money exchanged hands, reportedly compensating the victims' families. He later wrote about this cloak-and-dagger saga in his 2016 book The Contractor: How I Landed in Pakistan's Deadliest Jail and Then Escaped, revealing how the CIA operates when things get messy.