Obama Administration Accused of Inflating Terror Threat for Political Gain

Senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials have told The Guardian newspaper that President Obama's administration has deliberately exaggerated the current terror threat to European cities from militants in Pakistan for political reasons.

"I will not deny the fact that there may be internal political dynamics, including the forthcoming midterm elections," Pakistan's high commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, told CBS News in London, mirroring comments he made to The Guardian. "If the Americans have definite information about terrorists and al Qaeda people, we should be provided with that and we could go after them ourselves."

Hasan, whose job is equivalent to that of ambassador, has a reputation for making controversial, sometimes incendiary comments, but he is a veteran diplomat with close ties to the Pakistani political leadership.

"This terror threat could be a mole hill that has been made into a mountain," Hasan told CBS in a telephone interview Friday morning.

He called the widely reported threat of "commando-style" sieges being planned for London and other major cities in France and Germany, "a mixture of frustrations, ineptitude and lack of appreciation of ground realities," on the part of U.S. officials seeking to justify a dramatic increase in drone missile strikes against militant targets on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan. - CBS News Story