NEW YORK - A former senior US official has questioned the motives of Mansoor Ijaz, the Pakistani-American businessman behind the 'memogate scandal, saying it was highly likely that any one in Pakistan had prior information about the Abbottabad raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed. Its incredible that the US would have put the bin Laden mission at risk by sharing details with a Pakistani government they had ceased to trust even with such a personally respected representative of Pakistan as (Husain) Haqqani, David Frum, who served as a special assistant to President George W Bush, referring to Ijazs claim that President Asif Ali Zardari and Haqqani, his ambassador to the US, knew about it. Yet on that incredible supposition, Ijaz builds a conspiracy theory highly congenial to the most reactionary and anti-democratic elements in Pakistan - and circulates the conspiracy theory at a time and in a way likely to have impact, Frum said in an article posted on CNNs website on Monday, The former official denounced Ijaz as someone who takes special delight in political intrigue, and said Ijazs story was bizarre on its face. Nobody has done more these past weeks to undercut Pakistani democracy and poison US-Pakistan relations, he said of Ijaz. Whats he up to? Democratic Pakistanis of a conspiratorial mindset have suggested all kinds of sinister motivations for Ijazs actions, the article said. Perhaps those suggestions are accurate. After all, if the conspiracy theories about Ijaz are not correct, we are left with only two other possibilities: Either he is telling the truth - but that possibility has to be discounted by the heavy evidence to the contrary - or Pakistani democracy has been corroded, and the US and Pakistan have been pushed toward a dangerous confrontation by a reckless fantasist motivated by childish vanity.