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Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

Experts cautioned that although Pakistan’s militant groups and Al Qaeda work together, directly linking the Pakistani spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with Al Qaeda is difficult.

American officials have rarely uncovered definitive evidence of direct ISI involvement in a major attack.

But for all their eye-popping details, the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity. Most of the reports are vague, filled with incongruent detail, or crudely fabricated. The same characters – famous Taliban commanders, well-known ISI officials – and scenarios repeatedly pop up. And few of the events predicted in the reports subsequently occurred.

A retired senior American officer said ground-level reports were considered to be a mixture of "rumours, bull**** and second-hand information" and were weeded out as they passed up the chain of command. "As someone who had to sift through thousands of these reports, I can say that the chances of finding any real information are pretty slim," said the officer, who has years of experience in the region.

If anything, the jumble of allegations highlights the perils of collecting accurate intelligence in a complex arena where all sides have an interest in distorting the truth.

"The fog of war is particularly dense in Afghanistan," said Michael Semple, a former deputy head of the EU mission there. "A barrage of false information is being passed off as intelligence and anyone who wants to operate there needs to be able to sift through it. The opportunities to be misled are innumerable."

But many of the 180 reports appear to betray as much about the motivation of the sources than those of the alleged foreign puppet-masters. Some US officers were aware of this. One report from 2006 notes that an informant "divulges information for monetary remuneration and likely fabricated or exaggerated the above report for just that reason".

Some of the most striking claims come from the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's foremost spy agency and a bitter rival to the ISI.

But many such reports appear highly implausible. In February 2007 the ISI and insurgents planned "to buy alcoholic drinks from markets in Miranshah [in Pakistan's tribal belt] and Peshawar [in order to] mix them with poison and use them for poisoning ANSF and ISAF troops" according to a C3 report. The Karzai plot is assessed to be "probably true".

Apparently more credible reports of ISI skulduggery are marked SEWOC, or Signals Intelligence Electronic Warfare Operations Centre, signifying they come from intercepted communications. One SEWOC report, in December 2007, accused the ISI of deploying children as suicide bombers. But the military source said that such intelligence was also prone to distortion, and that its value depended on whose conversation was being eavesdropped. "If we ever found out anything that the ISI or Pakistani military were somehow complicit in the insurgency, it never came from these sources. Never," he said.

But while Gul, 73, is a well-known fundamentalist ideologue in Pakistan, experts say he is unlikely to play a frontline role in the fighting. Afghan informers may have used his name – he is notorious in Afghanistan – to spice up their stories, said Semple.

"There's a pattern of using a dramatis personae of famous ISI officers and Afghan commanders, and recurring reports of dramatic developments such as the delivery of surface-to-air missiles, to give these reports credibility," he said. "But most of them are simply fabricated."

The retired US officer said some NDS officials "wanted to create the impression that Pakistani complicity was a threat to the US". And more broadly speaking, "there's an Afghan prejudice that wants to see an ISI agent under every rock".