Document leak part of U.S. plot, says Pakistani ex-General

Karin Brulliard
Washington Post

RAWALPINDI, PAKISTAN — From the deluge of leaked military documents published Sunday, a former Pakistani spy chief emerged as a chilling personification of his nation’s alleged duplicity in the Afghan war — an erstwhile U.S. ally turned Taliban tutor.

Now planted squarely in the cross hairs, retired Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul seems little short of delighted.

In an interview Tuesday, Gul dismissed the accusations against him as “fiction” and described the documents’ release as the start of a White House plot. It will end, he posited, with an early U.S. pullout from Afghanistan — thus proving Gul, an unabashed advocate of the Afghan insurgency, right.

President Obama “is a very good chess player. . . . He says, ‘I don’t want to carry the historic blame of having orchestrated the defeat of America, their humiliation in Afghanistan,’ ” said Gul, 74, adding that the plot incorporates a troop surge that Obama knows will fail. “It doesn’t sell to a professional man like me.”