Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

'No Strings Attached': Man Claims Secret $3.5M From Pakistani Spy Agency Had No Influence

Ryan J. Reilly | April 3, 2012, 6:27AM

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai admits that he concealed more than $3.5 million in secret funds that his Kashmiri American Council (KAC) received from Pakistan's spy agency. He just doesn't think all that cash from Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) had any impact on his work.

Fai was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday for his role in a scheme that used straw donors to hide the foreign money Fai used to lobby on behalf of his native Kashmir.

While the 62-year-old had already pleaded guilty back in December, he argued that his lobbying efforts were not affected by the millions he received from Pakistan's intelligence agency.

"Because he needed financial resources, Dr. Fai was willing to accept funding from any donor that was willing to contribute as long as there were no strings attached to the receipt of the funds," his lawyer in a court document ahead of his sentencing.

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Pakistan

Man Pleads Guilty In Plot Of Pakistani Spies To Lobby U.S. Politicians

Ryan J. Reilly | December 7, 2011, 1:30PM

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

A Pakistani-American man charged in July with running a secret Pakistani intelligence center in the United States pleaded guilty to "conspiracy and tax violations in connection with a decades-long scheme to conceal the transfer of at least $3.5 million from the government of Pakistan to fund his lobbying efforts in America related to Kashmir," the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, 62, faces a maximum of five years in prison on the conspiracy count and three years on the tax violation when he's sentence on March 9. Under his plea agreement, Fai will forfeit his interest in $142,851.32 that was seized by the government after his arrest.

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Pakistan

Man Accused in Pakistani Spy Plot Dies

October 7, 2011, 4:45PM

by Kim Barker and Habiba Nosheen, ProPublica

One of the men accused of helping orchestrate a plot by Pakistan's main spy agency to influence U.S. policy on Kashmir died today, providing the latest twist in an already bizarre case.

Pakistani-American Zaheer Ahmad, 63, suffered a stroke on Sept. 28, said Azmat Ullah Qureshi, a spokesman for Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, the hospital Ahmad founded. Ahmad was taken to Shifa, where he remained in a coma until dying this morning, Qureshi said.

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Pakistan

The Man Behind Pakistan Spy Agency's Plot to Influence Washington

October 3, 2011, 12:08PM

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

By Kim Barker and Habiba Nosheen, ProPublica, and Raheel Khursheed, Special to ProPublica

The night should have been a coup for Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai. Once a poor villager from halfway around the world, Fai had become the go-to man in Washington, D.C., for his cause, Kashmir, the Himalayan region long caught in a tug of war between Pakistan and India.

And there he was on March 4, 2010, hosting a fundraiser for Rep. Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who had been the chief supporter in Congress of Fai's Kashmiri American Council for 20 years. In some ways, the event inside Fai's home in Fairfax, Va., symbolized everything that Fai had become, featuring speeches in the living room and kebabs and curries in the basement.

But it barely camouflaged how Fai's carefully built world was collapsing.

The FBI was monitoring almost every move Fai made, every email he sent, every call he received. Investigators believed Fai's main donors were not well-meaning idealists but members of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, the most powerful of Pakistan's spy agencies.

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FBI

Feds: Pakistanis Ran Secret Intelligence Centers, Official Donated To Dan Burton And Obama

Ryan J. Reilly | July 19, 2011, 1:00PM

Federal officials have charged two men with acting in a long-term conspiracy to act as agents of the Pakistani government without disclosing their relationship with the foreign government. One of those charged has given multiple donations to politicians on both sides of the aisle, most of it to Rep. Dan Burton (R).

The Department of Justice says U.S. citizens Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, 62, and Zaheer Ahmad, 63, ran the Kashmiri American Council (KAC), which held itself out to be a "Kashmiri organization run by Kashmiris and financed by Americans," according to DOJ.

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Osama bin Laden

CIA Spied On Bin Laden From Safe House

Eric Lach | May 6, 2011, 9:45AM

The CIA had for months been spying on the compound where Osama bin Laden was found and killed by U.S. forces earlier this week, according to reports.

The agency maintained a rented safehouse near bin Laden's compound, where a small team of spies "relied on Pakistani informants and other sources to help assemble a 'pattern of life' portrait of the occupants and daily activities at the fortified compound where bin Laden was found," officials told The Washington Post.

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CIA

Was Raymond Davis Bailed Out By Sharia Law?

Eric Lach | March 16, 2011, 9:58AM

Raymond Davis

The diplomatic standoff over CIA contractor Raymond Davis ended on Wednesday, after a Pakistani court acquitted and released Davis, who had been held for almost 2 months after shooting two men dead on the streets of Lahore. But the resolution came only after a deal was reached to pay the victims' families what the Punjab Law Minister called "blood money" -- in accordance with Islamic law.

In other words, Davis may have been bailed out by sharia.

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Raymond Davis

Pakistan Court Acquits CIA Contractor In Double Murder Case

Eric Lach | March 16, 2011, 8:49AM

Raymond Davis

The CIA contractor arrested in January after shooting two men dead on the streets of Lahore, Pakistan, has been released, Reuters reports. Raymond Davis was indicted earlier Tuesday on murder charges, but was then acquitted and released following an agreement that had been reached to pay the victims' families.

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Raymond Davis

NYT Explains Why It Held Back Reporting On CIA Contractor

Eric Lach | February 28, 2011, 9:49AM

Raymond Davis

New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane wrote a column this weekend probing the paper's decision to withhold information about Raymond Davis, the American man who was arrested in Pakistan in January after shooting two men dead on the streets of Lahore.

Last week, the Times and other news outlets revealed that, after a request by the Obama administration, they had held back reporting that Davis was a contractor working for the CIA.

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Raymond Davis

U.S. Officials Admit American Arrested In Pakistan Worked With CIA

Eric Lach | February 21, 2011, 1:40PM

Raymond Davis

American government officials now say that Raymond Davis, the American man arrested in Pakistan last month after shooting two men dead in Lahore, was part of a covert, C.I.A.-led team of operatives, according to The New York Times.

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Raymond Davis

Video Shows Pakistani Police Questioning Accused U.S. Shooter (VIDEO)

Eric Lach | February 10, 2011, 9:41AM

On Wednesday, Pakistani TV news aired what is apparently video of Pakistani police interrogating Raymond Davis, the American who allegedly shot and killed two men in Lahore, Pakistan last month, and whose continued detention has touched off a diplomatic crisis.

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Raymond Davis

Mysterious Shooting In Pakistan Becomes International Incident

Eric Lach | February 9, 2011, 5:04PM

Raymond Davis

The controversy surrounding the alleged shooting of two Pakistani men by an American man in Lahore, Pakistan quickly begot a diplomatic war of words. Now, with officials from both countries holding fast to their version of events and to their positions, the fallout is threatening to push an already uneasy alliance towards a full scale crisis.

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'Ground Zero Mosque'

Koran Burning Still Off, For Now, As One Dies In Afghanistan Protest

Rachel Slajda | September 10, 2010, 9:46AM

Pastor Terry Jones, of the Dove World Outreach Center, with Imam Muhammad Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida

Pastor Terry Jones, appearing on today's morning shows, says he will not be burning Korans on Saturday even though the imam of a planned Islamic center near Ground Zero did not agree to move his project further from the site.

"Right now, we have plans not to do it," Jones said on Good Morning America.

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Wikileaks

Wikileaks Releases Docs Showing Pakistan-Taliban Cooperation Against U.S. In Afghanstan

Rachel Slajda | July 26, 2010, 9:50AM

Soldiers in Afghanistan

The web site Wikileaks has released 92,000 documents related to the Afghanistan War, many of them classified, that paint a bleak picture of the ongoing war.

Wikileaks released the documents, which amount to a daily war diary dating from 2004 to 2009, to the New York Times, Der Spiegel and The Guardian, in addition to publishing them online themselves.

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Gary Brooks Faulkner

Bin Laden Hunter: 'I Put My Life On The Line' (VIDEO)

Rachel Slajda | June 24, 2010, 10:12AM

Gary Brooks Faulkner

Gary Faulkner, who was arrested this month in Pakistan while searching for Osama bin Laden, gave an interview to CNN yesterday after arriving back in the U.S.

Faulkner, who was found with a gun, a sword, night goggles, and Christian literature, was not charged by Pakistani authorities but instead returned to the U.S. It was his seventh trip to the country, he said, on a hunt for bin Laden.

"How does one go about trying to find Osama bin Laden?" asked the interviewer.

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Gary Brooks Faulkner

Brother Of Bin Laden Hunter: 'I Felt He Had A Good Chance' (VIDEO)

Justin Elliott | June 16, 2010, 9:29AM

Scott Faulkner

Scott Faulkner, brother of so-called Bin Laden Hunter Gary Brooks Faulkner, fully approved of his brother's "plan" to track down the terrorist mastermind in the mountains of northern Pakistan. He even gave his brother a ride to the airport.

"Gary's an adult," said Scott Faulkner, a Colorado doctor, on the Today show this morning. "And he wasn't harming anyone else, he was not engaged in illegal activity. So the rest of us felt, if that's what he needed to do, that's what he needed to do."

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Gary Brooks Faulkner

'Bin Laden Hunter' Has Criminal Record

Justin Elliott | June 15, 2010, 6:08PM

Gary Brooks Faulkner

The man who was reportedly arrested in Pakistan with a gun, a sword, night goggles, and Christian literature on a mission to kill Osama bin Laden, has a substantial criminal record in his home state of Colorado.

The Denver Post reports on Gary Brooks Faulkner:

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Times Square Bomb

Ex-ATF Agent: Shahzad 'Was Not The Valedictorian Of The Bomb School'

Justin Elliott | May 11, 2010, 8:34AM

A timer clock used on the failed Times Square bomb and Faisal Shahzad.

With top Obama Administration officials now saying that alleged Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad was trained in Pakistan, the natural next question is: what kind of terrorist training results in what was by all accounts an extremely crude bomb that not only failed to go off, but also included 250 pounds of nonexplosive fertilizer?

TPMmuckraker put the question to explosives expert James Cavanaugh, who recently retired after more than three decades with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

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Jaish-e-Muhammad

What Were Five American Men Doing At Militant-Linked House In Pakistan?

Justin Elliott | December 10, 2009, 10:30AM

Five young men from Northern Virginia have been arrested in Pakistan in a house with links to a militant group, but they have not been charged with a crime and details of what they were doing are still hard to come by. But the case is already being cited as the latest example in an emerging trend of radicalization of American Muslims who travel overseas and link up with foreign terrorist groups.

Here's the basic outlines of the story, as it has been reported so far: five American Muslim men, ranging in age from their late teens to mid-20s, flew to Pakistan earlier this month and, after bouncing around several cities, ended up in a house in Sargodha, in Punjab Province. The owner of the house where they were arrested reportedly has ties to the group Jaish-e-Muhammad, considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

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Stewart Nozette

Pakistani Embassy: We're Keeping Close Eye On India-Linked Nozette Spy Case

Justin Elliott | October 27, 2009, 4:44PM

Indian and Pakistani national flags with Stewart Nozette (inset)

The spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington tells TPMmuckraker that it is watching the espionage case of Stewart Nozette closely following a report that the high-level U.S. government scientist traveled to India with two computer thumb drives in January.

"Definitely we have interest in the news," said spokesman Nadeen Kiani. "The concerned desk officer is watching [developments]."

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