June 4, 2009, a panel discussion was held at Washington's International Spy Museum to discuss the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan's premier intelligence agency. The participants were Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, currently a senior fellow for foreign policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution, who has been a senior advisor to three US presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues and co-chaired President Obama's strategic review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan March 2009. He is also the author of The Search for Al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future. Shuja Nawaz, Director of the South Asia Center of the Atlantic Council of the United States and brother of the late General Asif Nawaz former Chief of Army Staff was the other participant. Shuja Nawaz is the author of FATA: A Most Dangerous Place and Crossed Swords Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within, which, according to The Washington Post Book World, "fleshes out the history of the Pakistani army in a dense but carefully researched book... conclude(s) that the military domination of Pakistani society has stunted the country's political growth, and that the army's obsession with Indian hegemony has perverted relations with neighbors and allies... explores the flaws in US and Pakistani thinking that helped allow the Taliban's comeback." The third panelist, Teresita Schaffer Director, South Asia Program of Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has had a 30-year career in the US Foreign Service, where she devoted most of her career to international economic issues and to South Asia, on which she was one of the State Department's principal experts and also served as the US Ambassador to Sri Lanka. Some of her publications include "Kashmir: Fifty Years of Running in Place," in Grasping the Nettle (USIP, 2004). Her CSIS publications include Kashmir: The Economics of Peace Building (2005), Pakistan's Future and U.S. Policy Options (2004), and Rising India and U.S. Policy Options in Asia (2002). Schaffer speaks French, Swedish, German, Italian, Hebrew, Hindi, and Urdu, and has studied Bengali and Sinhalese. Interestingly, the US media reported, there was a time in Washington when it would have been difficult to collect 50 people to hear someone talk about Pakistan. But on Thursday, more than 150 people paid $15 each to hear the three scholars discuss ISI. The topic according to the Spy Museum handout was: 'Pakistan Today: The ISI, India, and What the Future Holds'. The talk focused on the real or perceived links between the ISI and those who carried out the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. The pressing questions, "How does the history of the ISI - and its partnership with the CIA during the 1980s - affect its actions and worldview? How do the United States and Pakistan look on their partnership in today's circumstances?" were addressed by the panelists. Ambassador Schaffer reviewed US-Pakistan relations since early 1950s, when Pakistan was America's most 'allied ally.' The relationship grew stronger during the Afghan war but weakened in 1990 when Pakistan became the 'most sanctioned ally.' After 9/11, the relationship improved. But, she explained, from the very beginning there's a clash of interests between the two allies. Shuja Nawaz explained how the ISI evolved from a small, insignificant agency within the army to one of the world's premier spy agencies. He recalled that it was a politician - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto - who founded the ISI's political cell while Gen Zia-ul-Haq and others further expanded this role. The ISI, however, became a leading spy agency during the Afghan war and has retained its role since then. Shuja went on to defend the ISI and refuted its connections with Lashkar-i-Taiba. Bruce Riedel, who on May 30th had authored a scathing account of the dangers posed by Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling in the hands of terrorists, defined the ISI's alleged links to various militant groups as 'fighting some, tolerating others and patronizing a few.' But he warned that 'the ISI has clearly been penetrated by some of these extreme jihadist groups' that it created to do jihad first in Afghanistan and then in Kashmir. 'When you have attacks inside fortified compounds'-like the one last week in Lahore-'those are being done by someone who's working a double game. But that doesn't mean the agency itself is a rogue organization. It means it's been penetrated.' Mr. Riedel, however, said that there were no indications that the ISI had a cooperative relationship with Al-Qaeda or the Pakistani Taliban, but groups like Lashkar-i-Taiba saw little problem cooperating with one another. 'Selective counter-terrorism is weak counter-terrorism, because the bad guys tend to operate together,' he said. Mr. Riedel noted that recently a major terrorist cell was exposed in Karachi. The target was to go after senior officials in the city government. That cell had as its leadership a troika: one member of the Pakistani Taliban, one member of Lashkar-i-Taiba, and one member of Al-Qaeda. 'They are prepared to work together. They're not prepared, so far at least, to turn on each other,' he noted. Despite such concerns, Mr. Riedel said, the ISI continued to be one of CIA's most important partners in the war against extremists. He concluded that "The ISI is not a rogue intelligence agency, as it mostly follows the prerogatives of the Pakistani military or civilian leadership". This is a far cry from his description of Pakistan, in his book on Al-Qaeda published by Brookings Institution Press (September 1, 2008), mentioned earlier where he warns "Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world today, where every nightmare of the 21st century terrorism, nuclear proliferation, the danger of nuclear war, dictatorship, poverty and drugs come together in one place". Throughout the book he is concerned about the shadowy role of ISI in bombings, assassinations and even Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear bombs. It appears that ISI will continue to be targeted by its detractors because of its effectiveness.