Good news, for very precisely calculated values of ‘good’: “CIA security officer” Raymond A. Davis is no longer in a Pakistani jail:
A C.I.A. security officer jailed for killing two Pakistanis on a crowded Lahore street was released Wednesday after weeks of secret negotiations between American and Pakistani officials, a pledge of millions of dollars in “blood money” to the victims’ families, and quiet political pressure by Pakistani officials on the courts.
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The fatal shootings by Raymond A. Davis, who was immediately flown out of the country to Kabul, Afghanistan, had ignited a furor here and brought relations between the C.I.A. and Pakistan’s spy service to perhaps their lowest ebb since the Sept. 11 attacks.
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Mr. Davis’s release appears to have temporarily cooled frictions between the two wary allies, but it left unresolved many of the irritants that strained ties in the first place. American officials insisted on Wednesday that the C.I.A. made no pledges to scale back covert operations in Pakistan or to give the Pakistani government or its intelligence agency a roster of American spies operating in the country — assertions that Pakistani officials disputed. […] __
Pakistani and American officials said Wednesday that they were particularly eager to resolve the case before the Lahore High Court could rule on whether Mr. Davis should be granted diplomatic immunity — a protection that American officials insisted he was entitled to. A ruling against Mr. Davis, American officials said, could have set a precedent for other countries to deny C.I.A. operatives diplomatic protections.
So, “our man” in Lahore, “CIA contractor… former U.S. Special Operations soldier and employee of the private security firm known as Blackwater“, has been removed from foreign custody for the low, low downpayment of only $2.3 million:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed gratitude to the victims’ families in Pakistan and said that the Justice Department has begun an investigation into the shooting that led to Davis’s arrest in Lahore on Jan. 27.
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Clinton insisted that the United States had not made any payment to the families or agreed to reimburse the Pakistani government. But other U.S. officials signaled that Washington had endorsed the “blood money” payments and expects to reimburse Pakistani authorities, who had led an effort in recent weeks to convince the Pakistani families to accept cash in return for dropping the case.
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“We expect to receive a bill,” a U.S. official said…