"Mr. Khalilzad had spoken by telephone with Mr. Zardari, the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, several times a week for the past month until he was confronted about the unauthorized contacts, a senior United States official said. Other officials said Mr. Khalilzad had planned to meet with Mr. Zardari privately next Tuesday while on vacation in Dubai, in a session that was canceled only after Richard A. Boucher, the assistant secretary of state for South Asia, learned from Mr. Zardari himself that the ambassador was providing "advice and help."

" 'Can I ask what sort of "advice and help" you are providing?' Mr. Boucher wrote in an angry e-mail message to Mr. Khalilzad. 'What sort of channel is this? Governmental, private, personnel?' Copies of the message were sent to others at the highest levels of the State Department; the message was provided to The New York Times by an administration official who had received a copy.

"The conduct by Mr. Khalilzad, who is Afghan by birth, has also raised hackles because of speculation that he might seek to succeed Hamid Karzai as president ofAfghanistan. Mr. Khalilzad, who was the Bush administration's first ambassador to Afghanistan, has also kept in close contact with Afghan officials, angering William Wood, the current American ambassador, said officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter of Mr. Khalilzad's contacts. Mr. Khalilzad has said he has no plans to seek the Afghan presidency.

"Through his spokesman, he said he had been friends with Mr. Zardari for years. "Ambassador Khalilzad had planned to meet socially with Zardari during his personal vacation," said Richard A. Grenell, the spokesman for the United States Mission to the United Nations. "But because Zardari is now a presidential candidate, Ambassador Khalilzad postponed the meeting, after consulting with senior State Department officials and Zardari himself."

"A senior American official said that Mr. Khalilzad had been advised to "stop speaking freely" to Mr. Zardari, and that it was not clear whether he would face any disciplinary action."

Disciplinary action in the Bush regime...that's a joke.  The Bush method of operation is the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing; lying; criminal conduct, and covering up the lies and crimes.