Reply #3: Did Bush Administration Burn Key Al Qaeda Double?

[muchacho]

Did Bush Administration Burn Key Al Qaeda Double?


Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff of Reuters reveal the explosive information that the Bush administration blew the cover Monday of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. On Sunday August 1, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced a new alert against an al-Qaeda plot concerning fincial institutions in New York and Washington, DC.

Pressed for details by the New York Times, some Bush administration official revealed that the information came from a recently arrested man in Pakistan named "Khan." The New York Times published his name on Monday.

Reuters alleges,

"The New York Times published a story on Monday saying U.S. officials had disclosed that a man arrested secretly in Pakistan was the source of the bulk of information leading to the security alerts. The newspaper named him as Khan, although it did not say how it had learned his name. U.S. officials subsequently confirmed the name to other news organizations on Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch al Qaeda suspects."



I don't have access to a hard copy of last Monday's NYT anymore, and so cannot check. The article as it appears in Lexis Nexis, from the "late edition" on Monday, already has Khan's full name.

Douglas Jehl and David Rohde wrote in the article published Monday, Aug. 2, "The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American officials. The figure, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was described by a Pakistani intelligence official as a 25-year-old computer engineer, arrested July 13, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages." Reuters seems to say that the first, early morning edition of the article just identified the figure as "Khan."

Reuters implies that once the Americans blew Khan's cover, the Pakistani ISI were willing to give Rohde more details in Karachi.

This part of the Reuters chronology seems not quite right to me, unless the early-edition Jehl/Rohde story on Monday only gave "Khan" and not the full name.

Anyway, Khan had been secretly apprehended by Pakistani military intelligence in mid-July, and had been turned into a double agent. He was actively helping investigators penetrate further into al-Qaeda cells and activities via computer, and was still cooperating when the "senior Bush administration" figure told Jehl about him.

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http://progressivetrail.org/articles/040807Cole.shtml