In an earlier post, I talked the leaking of a name of a captured double-agent who had been working in al-Qaeda for Pakistan. Until this week, it looked like the leak had come from the Bush administration.
Now a former Pakistani official claims the leak came from Pakistan: Subcontracting the hunt for bin Laden by Husain Haqqani Salon.com. Several bloggers have been analyzing this information and its possible implications:
Laura Rozen 08/17/04
Josh Marshall 08/17/04
Kevin Drum Khan Outed by Pakistan? 08/17/04
Juan Cole The Outing of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan: State of Play 08/18/04
It appears from these reports and comments that US officials were not the original leakers of the double-agent's name. As Marshall notes, this information casts some doubt on "that administration officials leaked Khan's name in order to bolster the credibility of the terror warnings issued just after the end of the Democratic convention, and that they did so out of some mix of organizational incompetence and indifference to the consequences of the leak."
But even that interpretation of the leak doesn't mean that the seemingly useless terror alert of a couple of weeks ago wasn't connected. Cole observes:
Earlier on, Reuters had reported, and I had repeated, that the name of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan was given on background to the press by a Bush administration official. The assertion was confirmed by National Security Adviser Condaleeza Rice in an August 8 interview on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, in which she said that US officials gave the name out on background. Both Reuters and Rice appear to have been wrong in this allegation, and I regret having repeated it. The transcript of the briefing, when released, did not contain Khan's name. However, I am not very embarrassed about being wrong, since Rice misled me. Her office later issued a correction, saying that she had just repeated back to Blitzer his own statement, and had misspoken. This performance by her seems to me bizarre and alarming, but there you have it.
The point remains that had Ridge not made his announcement, the press would have had no occasion to go searching for the source of his information. The Bush administration decision to go public put a powerful spotlight on the Pakistani arrests of June and July.
It is strange that the National Security Advisor would confirm that an administration official leaked the name if they hadn't. Whoever leaked the name first, the leak forced the hand of the British in an anti-terror operation they had underway, forcing them to move on arrests before they had the case fully prepared for fear that Khan's contacts among them would scatter once they knew he was a double-agent. Cole also adds a wrinkle I hadn't noticed before:
When the British made their arrest, the Bush administration announced that among those captured was Abu Eisa al-Hindi, also known as Abu Musa al-Hindi (both are noms de guerre).
The British, especially MI5 and Home Secretary David Blunkett, had not wanted his name made public, and were furious at all of the detailed information being given out to the public by the Bush administration or in consequence of its revelations.
Not knowing the particulars of that case, I have no way of knowing whether the British criticism is justified. So far, the Bush administration has caused far more problems by excessive secrecy than by too much openness. But in instances like the Valerie Plame case and the much more serious leak of signals-intelligence-related information to Ahmed Chalabi, they've been downright reckless in letting secrets out that should have been kept.
The larger issue raised by Husain Haqqani's article is the extent to which the US is relying on Pakistan to fight al-Qaeda and to hunt for Bin Laden. Pakistan's reliability as an ally in this effort is open to serious question. And the issue of the Khan leak raises yet another one.
[Update 08/19/04: This article gives additional information on the British reaction: British say US gave terror suspects a heads up Christian Science Monitor 08/19/04. Laura Rozen has added additional material to her blog post linked above since I first posted this.]
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