Inside Biden’s Secret Arms Deal

Deconstructed

The Intercept

News

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The U.S. orchestrated a secret arms deal to send weapons to Ukraine, helping Pakistan reach the threshold needed for an International Monetary Fund loan to save the country's economy, according to two sources with knowledge of the arrangement and documents leaked to The Intercept. This week on a special Deconstructed and Intercepted crossover episode, Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain discuss their reporting on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of Pakistani arms sales to the U.S. for the purpose of supplying the Ukrainian military. Grim and Hussain are joined by Arif Rafiq, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute and political risk analyst who focuses on Pakistan and the region. They break down the U.S.’s pressure to oust former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the IMF’s role in the country, and Pakistan’s political economy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, I'm Ryan Grimm and welcome back to an encore edition of the crossover that
0:08.1	so many of you have been demanding, intercepted and deconstructed are both in the house, here
0:13.2	with my colleague, Mertaza Hussein.
0:16.0	Mertaza, welcome to deconstructed.
0:18.8	Thank you for having me on Intercepted.
0:21.0	Great to be back.
0:22.0	I always love another crossover.
0:23.0	There you go.
0:24.0	So, let's get people up to speed who might have missed the first one, which was about
0:29.6	the, what is, what is known in Pakistan as the Cypher story.
0:33.8	So what, what is, what is quick, as quickly as we can, what's the Cypher story?
0:37.6	Sure.
0:38.6	For the past year and a half, Pakistan has been talking about this secret document that
0:42.1	no one has seen, but a known had seen till recently, but which showed allegedly, according
0:47.2	to former Prime Minister Imran Khan, that the U.S. had privately pushed for his removal
0:52.6	from power.
0:54.1	And since Khan's removal last year, Pakistan has been embroiled in a huge political and
0:58.3	economic and security crisis effectively.
1:02.4	But no one had seen this document until we published it last month.
1:06.0	And it did show that many of Khan's claims or the substance of Khan's claims that U.S.
1:10.6	diplomats from the State Department had encouraged his removal.
1:13.9	And even you could say threatened or incentivized the Pakistani military to make his removal
	...

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