Apparently Pakistan’s military is so upset about potential revelations relating to its alleged ties to Al Qaeda that murdering journalists is fair game:

Obama administration officials believe that Pakistan’s powerful spy agency ordered the killing of a Pakistani journalist who had written scathing reports about the infiltration of militants in the country’s military, according to American officials.

New classified intelligence obtained before the May 29 disappearance of the journalist, Saleem Shahzad, 40, from the capital, Islamabad, and after the discovery of his mortally wounded body, showed that senior officials of the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, directed the attack on him in an effort to silence criticism, two senior administration officials said.

Hard to see how this doesn’t further the growing divide between the U.S. government and that of Pakistan. Even in Russia, where journalists are regularly beaten, outright slayings by the military establishment are not going on. [The New York Times]