ABSTRACT
Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI's) power over domestic and foreign policy peaked during the Musharraf and Zardari presidencies. As far as ISI was concerned, Washington could complain about the Afghan Taliban as much as it wanted, but this was an issue of national interests and Pakistan's survival. In October 2010, Rear Admiral Adnan Nazir, the Director of ISI's Media Wing, and his assistant, Commodore Khalid Pervaiz, summoned Shahzad to ISI HQ and demanded that he retract a recent story on links between the Afghan Taliban and the ISI. Human rights violations against journalists by the ISI often follow a familiar pattern that starts with threatening phone calls and escalates into abductions, torture and other ill-treatment, and in some cases killings. A more recent case of overt ISI meddling in Pakistan's media is that of Hamid Mir, a popular TV talk show host on Geo News, one of Pakistan's most popular news channels.
