From Declassified Docs: Cable from US Envoy in Islamabad to the Sec of State: Feb 17, 1977: “I have often talked informally to Bhutto on this subject, giving him my increasingly strong personal conviction that he was headed for real trouble on this issue” https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1977-80v19/d232

MAK Chaudhry , federal interior secretary and ex-IB head writes in his book, martial law is siyasi andaz (p 37), the IB recorded a telephone conversation of a US Embassy official saying: “ Bhutto is finished, the party is over” https://archive.org/stream/MarshalKaSiyasiAndaz#page/n36/mode/1up

Evidence from Pakistani sources include the account by Brig Syed Tirmizi, former No 2 in the ISI. He named the US officials who helped the PNA, in his book: The Profiles of Intelligence

Memo of Conversation, between Kissinger & Pak Amb Yaqoob Khan: Washington, September 11, 1976, 3:07 p.m. Kissinger: “You know that if the Democrats win, they would like nothing better than to make a horrible example of somebody...you will face an assault” https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76ve08/d235

Shirin Tahir-Kheli, Asian Survey (Summer, 1978): “one source” told me that the “out going American ambassador (in Islamabad) had gone so far as to tell Bhutto bluntly that if he did no back down he would no longer stay in power.” She later served in State Deptt and the NSC