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Of all the open sores in the long, painful relationship between the United States and Pakistan, the dragged-out case of Daniel Pearl’s murder hurts the worst.

Just over 20 years have passed since Pearl, an affable and gifted correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, went missing in Karachi. About a month after his disappearance on Jan. 23, 2002, his killers posted a grisly video of his beheading. 

From start to finish, the people involved in Pearl’s kidnapping and murder were members of militant groups long backed by Pakistan’s all-powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI.  Last month, in yet another outrage, Pakistan’s Supreme Court freed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the man responsible for luring Pearl to his death, from prison and sent him to a halfway house.  The judges had connections to the ISI.

The act exemplified Pakistan’s treacherous double game with the U.S.  The Islamic nation claims to practice democratic norms, yet empowers its security agencies to collaborate with the wo…