PESHAWAR, Feb 21: The American arrested in Pakistan after shooting two men at a crowded traffic stop was part of a covert, CIA-led team of operatives conducting surveillance on militant groups deep inside the country, sources told Dawn.

Working from safe houses in Peshawar and Lahore, the detained American contractor, Raymond A. Davis, a retired Special Forces soldier, carried out scouting and other reconnaissance missions for a Central Intelligence Agency task force of case officers and technical surveillance experts called the Joint Special Operations Command or JSOC, the sources said.

That the JSOC had been operating since 2009 seems to have caught Pakistan’s security apparatus by surprise, though it is still not clear if at all how much of its operations was within Pakistan’s knowledge.

It was after the US and western press blew Davis’s cover Pakistani official sources are now grudgingly acknowledge his association with the CIA.

“There has never been any doubt of him being working for the CIA”, one source told Dawn. “It is as clear as daylight,” the source remarked.

The sources said that the CIA-affiliated team in Peshawar and Lahore with which Davis worked was charged with tracking the movements of various Pakistani militant groups.

The officials gave various accounts of the make-up of the covert task force and of Davis, who at his arrest was carrying a Glock pistol, a long-range wireless set, a small telescope, and a headlamp.

An American source and a Pakistani official said in interviews that operatives from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command had been assigned to the group to help with the surveillance missions. Special operations troops routinely work with the CIA in Pakistan.

An official spokesman declined to comment on the existence of JSOC and Davis’ activities in Pakistan, saying the matter be put to the Foreign Office for comments.

Even before his arrest, Davis’s CIA affiliation was known to Pakistani authorities, who keep close tabs on the movements of Americans. His visa, presented to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in late 2009, describes his job as a “regional affairs officer”, a common job description for officials working with the Central Intelligence Agency.

According to that application, Davis carried an American diplomatic passport and was listed as “administrative and technical staff”.

Relations between the two spy agencies, ISI and CIA, were tense even before the Lahore incident. In December, the CIA’s station chief in Pakistan hurriedly left the country after his identity became known.

Some people inside the CIA, according to US media reports, believe that ISI operatives were behind the disclosure—retribution for the head of the ISI, Lt-Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, being named in a New York City lawsuit filed in connection with the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai.

Documents released by Pakistan’s Foreign Office show that Davis was paid $200,000 a year, including travel expenses and insurance.

He served in the infantry in Europe — including a short tour as a peacekeeper in Macedonia — before joining the Third Special Forces Group in 1998, where he remained until he left the Army in 2003. The Army Special Forces —known as Green Berets — are an elite group trained in foreign languages and cultures, and weapons.

It is unclear when Davis began working for the CIA, but American officials said that in recent years he worked for the spy agency as a Blackwater contractor and later founded his own small company, Hyperion Protective Services.

Sources said that the JSOC team occupying a house used for operations in Peshawar on a road in the University Town has since disappeared.

“They appear to have gone underground or have left the country,” a source privy to the investigations said.

Davis, the source said, was heading a 16-member team in Peshawar before heading for Lahore to continue its operations. “Now, there is no one at the house. They have disappeared,” the source said.