TNR: "July Surprised. Has TNR's prediction come true?" Pakistan intel.

[madfloridian]

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040816&s=aaj081604

SNIP..."While media coverage of the capture didn't exactly overshadow Kerry--Ghailani isn't Osama bin Laden--the announcement's timing seemed suspicious. Ghailani wasn't apprehended on July 29 at all, but rather four days earlier. Last month, The New Republic reported that the Bush administration was pressuring the Pakistanis to deliver a "high-value target" (HVT) in time for the November elections ("July Surprise?" July 19). According to an official with Pakistan's powerful Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), a White House aide told ISI chief Ehsan ul-Haq during a spring visit to Washington that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July," during the convention. When asked this week if the announcement of Ghailani's capture on July 29 confirmed tnr's reporting, National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack told the Los Angeles Times, "There is no truth to that statement."

SNIP..."according to an ISI officer, FBI officials, who had initially insisted on keeping the arrest secret, told officials in Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's government that Islamabad should announce Ghailani's capture. An ISI official explains, "When it comes to matters especially pertaining to Al Qaeda, it is always the U.S. administration that takes most of the decisions, while the Pakistani government simply plays the role of a front man." This official and another ISI official believe that the driving factor behind the announcement was U.S. politics. "What else could explain it?" the second official says."

SNIP..." Though there is no policy governing how long to keep such arrests secret, standard intelligence practices dictate that the capture should not have been made public until investigators had finished with Ghailani (and the laptop and computer disks he had been captured with). Indeed, Ghailani may still talk, but some current and former American officials fear that, by broadcasting his name around the world, the Pakistanis have reduced the value of the intelligence that interrogators can extract from him. "Now, anything that he was involved in is being shredded, burned, and thrown in a river," a senior counterterrorism official told the Los Angeles Times. "We have to assume anyone affiliated with this guy is on the run ... when, usually, we can get great stuff as long as we can keep it quiet." Adds former CIA operative Robert Baer: "It makes no sense to make the announcement then. Presumably, everything does is compartmented. By announcing to everybody in the world that we have this guy, and he is talking, you have to assume that you shoot tactics. To keep these guys off-balance, a lot of this stuff should be kept in secret. You get no benefit from announcing an arrest like this. You always want to get these guys when they are on vacation, when they are not expecting you."

[tom_paine]

1. Naturally, this cannot be permitted to find it's way on to Corporate TV

Pravda.

[Myrina]

2. I just keep remembering

... that during the 2000 campaign, the only foreign leader Bush was able to name/identify was the "newly elected" leader of Pakistan.

How conveeeeeeeenient ...... :eyes:

[madfloridian]

3. I had forgotten about that. LOL

And he had trouble pronouncing it. :evilgrin: