ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Twice in recent weeks, the United States provided Pakistan with the locations of insurgent bomb-making factories, only to see the militants learn their cover had been blown and vacate the sites before military action could be taken, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
Overhead surveillance video and other information was given to Pakistani officials in mid-May, officials said, as part of a trust-building effort by the Obama administration after the killing of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid earlier in the month.
But Pakistani military units that arrived at the sites in the tribal areas of North and South Waziristan on June 4 found them abandoned.
The incidents were expected to feature in conversations between Pakistani officials and CIA Director Leon Panetta, who arrived in Pakistan on Friday.
U.S. officials say they do not know how the operations were compromised. But they are concerned that either the information was inadvertently leaked inside Pakistan or that insurgents were warned directly by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI.
“There is a suspicion that perhaps there was a tip-off,” a senior Pakistan military official said Friday. “It’s being looked into by our people, and certainly anybody involved will be taken to task.”
