Christian Science Monitor:  “Did US blow cover on Al Qaeda mole?”

Reuters reported on Saturday that Pakistani intelligence officers said US officials blew the cover on an Al Qaeda mole last week, when the mole’s identity was confirmed to The New York Times. The Times originally identified the source of their information as “senior American officials.” The mole, computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, was arrested secretly in mid-July in Pakistan. He had agreed to help authorities track down Al Qaeda militants in Britain and the United States.

But Sunday US officials defended their actions, CNN reported, saying they had no choice but to let people know about the terror threat they had found detailed on Mr. Khan’s computers.

Working with Pakistani intelligence, Khan had sent off urgents e-mails to other Al Qaeda members, telling them to check-in. The New York Post reported over the weekend that Pakistani authorities were concerned that Khan’s exposure had jeopardized their efforts to use these e-mails to track down top Al Qaeda members. United Press International reports the revelation of Khan’s name by US officials last week ”exposed Khan and forced Pakistanis to move him to a secret location” […]

[…] MSNBC reported Monday that the early exposure of Khan not only ended the sting that Pakistani intelligence was conducting, but it also forced Britain’s intelligence service to move faster than it wanted to last Tuesday to apprehend terror suspects in England that had been e-mailed by Khan. Five other suspects were able to escape before British authorities could arrest them […]

[…] The Daily Telegraph reports that US officials have “hit back” against the criticism that they bungled the terror alert and blew the cover of the Al Qaeda mole. They released to Time magazine and to Newsweek more information on the plans for attacks in the US that were discovered on Khan’s computers. An unnamed military official told Time that spreading panic in terrorist ranks could also bear fruit.

“People get flushed out and when that happens other people get nervous. As they start to move, they talk and we hear them. It’s like hunting birds: you scare ‘em up, they run then you shoot them.”

An editorial Monday in Newsday praised the cooperation among British, American and Pakistani intelligence services and governments, and called the capture of key Al Qaeda agents a “significant victory.” But Newsday also said more cooperation of this type was needed.

Al Qaeda is not defeated. It may well be hatching yet another plot that is being studied and planned for years and is just waiting for the next opportune time to spring it. Even as the United States struggles to reform its intelligence capabilities, it cannot let its guard down. Ever.

Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, and a longtime commentator on the Middle East, speculated in his Informed Comment blog over the weekend that the reason US officials “gave up” Khan’s name was that they believed they had little choice, considering the current political environment in the US.

Bush gets the reports that Eisa al-Hindi had been casing the financial institutions, and there was an update as recently as January 2004 in the Al Qaeda file. So this could be a live operation. If Bush doesn’t announce it, and Al Qaeda did strike the institutions, then the fact that he knew of the plot beforehand would sink him if it came out (and it would) before the election. So he has to announce the plot. But if he announces it, people are going to suspect that he is wagging the dog and trying to shore up his popularity by playing the terrorism card. So he has to be able to give a credible account of how he got the information. So when the press is skeptical and critical, he decides to give up Khan so as to strengthen his case. In this scenario, he or someone in his immediate circle decides that a mere double agent inside Al Qaeda can be sacrificed if it helps Bush get reelected in the short term.

Cole’s analysis—once you edit out the partisan nonsense that seeks to ascribe to the Bushies a motive of base powerlust—seems fairly credible (if a bit wordy, and rather obvious):  damned if they do, damned if they don’t. The important question, then, becomes why is the Bush administration in a position where it feels it must release the intelligence information and also divulge the source? 

Maybe the New York Times can answer that.  Or perhaps Dan Rather.  Or Richard Clarke.  Or Joe Wilson.  Or Howard Dean.  Or Richard Ben Veniste.  Or Al Gore.  Or Dennis Kucinich.  Or Ted Kennedy.  Or Terry McAuliffe.  Or Michael Moore.  Or even John Kerry…

Because help is on the way!