Pakistan Releases Classified 2022 Cipher in Imran Khan Interference Case

On May 16, 2026, the U.S.-based investigative outlet Drop Site News published the full text of Cypher No. I-0678 — the classified Pakistani diplomatic cable that has been at the center of one of the country's most consequential political crises since Partition [1]. For the first time, the public can read the complete document that former Prime Minister Imran Khan waved at a rally in Islamabad in March 2022, claiming it proved an "international conspiracy" to topple his government. What the cable says, what it does not say, and how different actors have interpreted its contents tells a story about the fragility of Pakistan's democratic institutions, the ambiguities of U.S. diplomatic pressure, and the weaponization of classified information in domestic politics.

What the Cipher Actually Says

Cable I-0678 is dated March 7, 2022, and was authored by Pakistan's then-ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan. It documents a luncheon meeting at Pakistan House in Washington, D.C. between Ambassador Khan and Donald Lu, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs. Also present were Deputy Assistant Secretary Lesslie Viguerie, Pakistan's Deputy Chief of Mission Syed Naveed Bokhari, and the Pakistani defence attaché [2][3].

According to the published text, Lu expressed concern over Pakistan's "aggressively neutral position" on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and suggested that U.S.-Pakistan relations could improve if the no-confidence motion against Khan succeeded. The most quoted phrase attributed to Lu in the cable is: "I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington" [3][4].

Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan added his own assessment at the end of the cable: "Don [Donald Lu] could not have conveyed such a strong demarche without the express approval of the White House, to which he referred repeatedly. Clearly, Don spoke out of turn on Pakistan's internal political process" [2].

This is where the two competing interpretations diverge sharply. Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party characterized Lu's remarks as an explicit threat — a demand to remove a sitting prime minister, backed by consequences. The ambassador himself, however, testified in court in January 2024 that the words "conspiracy" and "threat" appear nowhere in the cipher [5][6]. He stated that the characterization of the cable as proof of a foreign conspiracy was "a political conclusion drawn by the leadership in Islamabad" [5].

The Chain of Custody

The cipher was transmitted through Pakistan's encrypted diplomatic communication system from the Washington embassy to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad. From there, copies were distributed to nine top government offices, including the Prime Minister's House, the Foreign Ministry, the Presidency, and senior intelligence officials [7][8].

After Imran Khan publicly displayed the document at a rally on March 27, 2022, and was subsequently removed from power through a no-confidence vote on April 9, the question of who held copies became legally significant. When the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) registered a case under the Official Secrets Act on August 15, 2023, only the Presidency had returned its copy to the Foreign Ministry. Seven other state offices had also not returned theirs [7].

The FIA alleged that the copy sent to the Prime Minister's House was never returned by Khan. Former Foreign Secretary Sohail Mehmood testified that the cipher copy was not returned to the ministry until after his retirement [8]. The ISI Secretariat, for its part, determined that the leak of a cipher's plain text "has no effect on security of encryptor" — meaning the disclosure did not compromise Pakistan's encrypted communications infrastructure itself [9].

Whether the document released by Drop Site News in 2026 is the identical, unaltered original remains an open question. The full text had previously been reported in part by The Intercept in August 2023 [4], and the 2026 publication is described as the first complete release. No official Pakistani or American body has publicly claimed the released version was altered or selectively redacted, though the Pakistani government has not formally authenticated it either.

The Legal Battlefield

The Conviction

In January 2024, a special court established under the Official Secrets Act of 1923 sentenced Imran Khan and former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to 10 years' imprisonment. The court found that Khan had used the cipher "for his political gains" and to avert the no-confidence motion, and that his actions "compromised Pakistan's international standing" [10][11].

The prosecution's case rested on the argument that Khan violated Sections 5 and 9 of the Official Secrets Act by publicly disclosing the contents of a classified document. Witnesses, including former principal secretary Azam Khan, testified that the former prime minister assigned "his choice meanings" to the cipher for political purposes [11].

The Acquittal

On June 3, 2024, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) acquitted both Khan and Qureshi. Chief Justice Amir Farooq and Justice Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb found a critical evidentiary gap: the cipher itself and its contents were never presented before the trial court [12][13]. The IHC's ruling effectively held that the prosecution had failed to prove its case because the central piece of evidence — the document — was absent from the proceedings.

The federal government challenged the acquittal before the Supreme Court [14], and Khan remained imprisoned on separate charges.

Historical Context Under the Official Secrets Act

Prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act in Pakistan are uncommon, and cases against sitting or former heads of government are historically anomalous. The most notable recent parallel is the 2024-2025 military trial of former ISI chief Lt. Gen. (ret.) Faiz Hameed, who was sentenced to 14 years for, among other things, violating the Official Secrets Act [15]. No previous Pakistani prime minister had been convicted under this statute, making the Khan case a legal first — even if the conviction was later overturned.

Pakistan's Official Secrets Act, inherited from British colonial law, criminalizes the unauthorized disclosure of classified information but does not define "foreign interference" or "conspiracy" as standalone offenses. The legal question was always narrower than the political one: not whether the U.S. interfered, but whether Khan broke the law by disclosing a classified document [16].

The U.S. Response: Denial on Repeat

The U.S. State Department's position has been consistent and unequivocal. On April 8, 2022, days after Khan's public allegations, spokesperson Jalina Porter stated: "There is absolutely no truth to these allegations" [17].

In testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee, Donald Lu himself rejected the charge directly: "These allegations, this conspiracy theory, is a lie, it is a complete falsehood." Lu added that "at no point does it [the cipher] accuse the United States' government or me personally of taking steps against Imran Khan" [17].

Throughout 2023, the State Department issued at least three additional denials at press conferences, with a deputy assistant secretary of state for Pakistan calling the claims "propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation" [17]. After the cipher's contents were reported by The Intercept in August 2023, spokesperson Matthew Miller offered a more nuanced response: "Even if those comments were accurate as reported, they in no way show the United States taking a position on who the leader of Pakistan ought to be" [17][18].

This last formulation is revealing. It concedes, hypothetically, that the conversation may have occurred as described, while arguing that expressing a preference is not the same as orchestrating a removal. The distinction between diplomatic signaling and foreign interference is precisely the fault line on which the entire controversy sits.

The Case for Sovereignty Violated

Those who take Khan's claims seriously — and they number in the tens of millions across Pakistan — point to several features of the cipher that, taken together, constitute a meaningful violation of sovereignty norms.

First, the timing: the March 7 meeting occurred while a no-confidence motion was already being organized against Khan. Lu's comments, even in the most charitable reading, amount to a senior U.S. official expressing a desired outcome for Pakistan's internal political process [3][4].

Second, the conditionality: "all will be forgiven" implies that Pakistan's standing with Washington depended on the removal of a specific elected leader. Under the UN Charter's principle of non-interference in domestic affairs, this kind of conditional diplomacy, if it constituted coercion, could implicate international norms [4].

Third, the Drop Site report based on leaked documents and insider interviews alleges that Pakistan's military, under then-Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, "orchestrated Imran Khan's removal to repair frayed ties with the U.S." [19]. The report details how, in October 2022, after Khan's ouster, Bajwa flew to Washington to meet Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, offering concessions on Pakistan's missile program and nuclear posture [19].

If this account is accurate, the cipher was not merely a diplomatic cable — it was the starting gun for a coordinated military-political operation to change Pakistan's government in alignment with U.S. preferences.

Source: Multiple Sources

Data as of May 18, 2026CSV

The Case for Political Exploitation

Skeptics of Khan's narrative — including Pakistan's military-judicial establishment, former diplomats, and some independent analysts — present a countervailing set of facts.

Pakistan's National Security Committee (NSC), which reviewed the cipher in detail with input from all service chiefs and heads of intelligence agencies, concluded twice — first under Khan's own government in March 2022, and again under his successor Shehbaz Sharif in April 2022 — that "there has been no foreign conspiracy" [20]. The committee, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, termed the cipher "a harmless and least important document" [20].

Ambassador Asad Majeed Khan, who authored the cable, testified that there was no mention of "conspiracy" or "threat" in his communication and expressed regret that the episode "undermined the integrity of Pakistan's communication system, the credibility of its diplomats, and diplomacy" [5][6].

The prosecution argued, and the special court agreed, that Khan selectively disclosed and recharacterized the cipher's contents at public rallies for political advantage — specifically, to rally support against the no-confidence motion [11]. Former principal secretary Azam Khan's testimony that the ex-PM used the cipher for "political gains" is the most direct insider claim supporting this interpretation [11].

The IHC acquittal, while a victory for Khan, did not rule on the substance of these allegations. It found only that the prosecution failed to present adequate evidence — a procedural failure, not a vindication of Khan's conspiracy narrative [12].

Economic and Diplomatic Fallout

The cipher controversy has unfolded against a backdrop of severe economic distress. Pakistan's GDP growth contracted to -0.4% in 2023, the worst performance in over a decade outside the pandemic year, before recovering modestly to 3.0% in 2024 [21].

Source: World Bank Open Data

Data as of Dec 31, 2024CSV

The political instability surrounding Khan's removal, imprisonment, and the May 9, 2023 protests — in which PTI supporters attacked military installations — contributed to an environment that deterred investment and complicated IMF bailout negotiations. Whether the cipher controversy specifically caused economic harm or merely accompanied a broader crisis is debatable, but the special court's judgment explicitly stated that Khan's actions led to "serious economic, diplomatic and political consequences" for Pakistan [10].

Intelligence-Sharing Implications

The public release of a classified diplomatic cable raises pointed questions about Pakistan's intelligence-sharing relationships. The cable documents a private conversation between U.S. and Pakistani diplomats — the kind of exchange that depends on an expectation of confidentiality.

U.S.-Pakistan intelligence cooperation has a long and troubled history. Pakistan halted intelligence sharing with the U.S. in 2018 after the Trump administration suspended approximately $2 billion in security aid [22]. The relationship has been described by analysts as "a double-edged sword," marked by mutual distrust [23].

The precedent of classified diplomatic communications being used — and ultimately published — in domestic criminal proceedings raises a concern that other nations may factor into their dealings with Islamabad. No allied government has publicly raised this concern through formal diplomatic channels, but the chilling effect on candid diplomatic reporting is a risk that Pakistan's own former ambassador flagged in his testimony [6].

China, Pakistan's closest strategic partner, has not commented publicly on the cipher's release. Beijing's own sensitivity about classified communications and its preference for opaque diplomacy suggest the precedent is unlikely to be welcomed, even if it is not publicly criticized.

Where Things Stand

As of May 2026, the cipher case occupies a paradoxical position. Khan was convicted and then acquitted. The document was classified, then leaked in fragments, then published in full. The U.S. denies interference while the cable's own text records a senior American diplomat expressing a preference for regime change in a sovereign nation. Pakistan's own national security apparatus reviewed the document and found no conspiracy, yet the military that led that review is alleged to have acted on the cable's implicit invitation.

The cipher controversy has resurfaced precisely as Pakistan positions itself as a diplomatic mediator in U.S.-Iran negotiations, a role that demands the trust of all parties involved [24]. Whether Cable I-0678 is a smoking gun proving foreign interference or a routine diplomatic dispatch weaponized for domestic politics may never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. What is clear is that its four-year journey from a classified telegram to a globally published document has left permanent marks on Pakistan's democracy, its judiciary, its diplomatic credibility, and its relationship with the United States.