Who or what is indicating?

Buried in a footnote over at headsup: the blog (fev was looking at something else worth looking at, check it out, was a reference to the BBC version of the story, which contains this sentence:

"The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says it is unusual for the US to release video footage of its operations and indicates that the military has come under great pressure to justify the airstrike."

Which is an interesting sentence.

Pragmatics (if I may anthropomorphize for a moment) doesn't want me to think Patience is indicating anything; that the same "it" that is unusual is doing the indicating. Filling in a "this" in front of the verb gives me that reading, but I have to assume that it was dropped somewhere along the way.

On the other hand, as it stands it's a perfectly formed paraphrase of something like, "Well, Jim, as you know, it is unusual for the US to release video footage of its operations. If I had to, I'd guess that the military has come under great pressure to justify the airstrike."

Unfortunately the article has no other references to Patience...