File photo
Pakistan’s federal cabinet on Sunday formally directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to launch an inquiry into audio leaks, allegedly of conversations between then-prime minister Imran Khan and senior ministers, on the diplomatic cipher that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) claims “proves” a foreign conspiracy against its government.
The cabinet, in a meeting on Friday, had decided to take legal action after two recordings of conversations allegedly between Khan and his aides went viral on social media. In one of the recordings, Khan can be heard saying he wants to “play” with the cipher, while in another he admits that it is a “transcript” and not a “letter,” as he had alleged during a public rally in March.
In a summary dated Oct. 1, the Cabinet Division noted that a sub-committee had been formed on Sept. 30 “to deliberate and recommend actions regarding the conversation of the former prime minister, Imran Khan, his political associates and the then-secretary to the P.M., available on the internet regarding the cipher message received from Parep Washington (Cypher No. 1-0678 dated March 7, 2022).”
It said that, in its first meeting, the sub-committee had recommended that the “matter of national security” merited legal action. “Therefore, the apex investigation agency (FIA) may be directed to inquire into the matter by constituting a team of senior officers, which may co-opt officers/officials from other intelligence agencies for the purpose, and to proceed further against the perpetrators in accordance with the law,” it said, adding that an “implementation report may be furnished to the Cabinet Division immediately.”
Earlier, the government had claimed that a copy of the cipher that was part of the Prime Minister’s House records had “gone missing,” suggesting that it had been removed from the building without proper authorization by the former prime minister. A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s House had described the “theft of diplomatic cipher records is an unforgivable crime” that was in violation of the Official Secrets Act, 1923.
Thus far, the PTI’s defense of the leaked conversations—whose validity they have not denied—is that they “prove” that the cipher was a “reality”; however, it is unclear how this justifies an attempt to “play” with the cipher, as the veracity of the cipher had already been accepted as fact in two separate meetings of the National Security Committee that had deliberated on it.
Khan first advanced his allegations of a foreign conspiracy during a rally on March 27 in which he brandished what he described as a “letter” from a “foreign country.” While he initially did not clarify what the “threat” entailed or what country was allegedly responsible, on April 1 he not only named the country but also detailed the cipher’s alleged contents.
The U.S., the incumbent government, as well as the armed forces have all denied any “conspiracy,” stressing that the language of the cipher merely warranted a demarche—that has since been issued.