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For the past 20 years, Pakistani officials have indignantly denied providing any assistance to the Taliban, portraying their countrymen as much victims of the Islamist Afghan Pashtun militia as the American soldiers who died fighting them.

And for just as long, U.S. military and intelligence officials have dismissed Pakistan’s denials, accusing its Inter-Service Intelligence Agency (ISI) of playing a duplicitous double game with its putative ally in Washington. Behind Pakistan’s denials, these officials said—and it became widely known—ISI operatives fed the Taliban’s hardline Haqqani network with weapons, military equipment and training—all of which the group then used in deadly attacks against both Afghan and U.S. forces and diplomats in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani network, seen by the Pentagon as the point of the Taliban’s spear in its war against U.S. and coalition forces, “has long enjoyed the support and protection of the Pakistani gove…