The unthinkable in the murky world of
intelligence has come to pass: the cover of a double agent
was blown while he was still active.
On 2 August, the Bush administration blew
the cover of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. A
day earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge had
announced a new alert against an Al Qaeda plan to attack
financial institutions in New York and Washington. When
the New York Times pressed certain administration officials
for more information, they disclosed to the newspaper
that the information regarding the Al Qaeda plot had come
from a recently arrested man in Pakistan named “Khan.”
The New York Times published his name on Monday. The later
editions spelt out the full name.
According to an investigation by Reuters
correspondents Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff, “The
New York Times published a story on Monday saying US 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. US officials
subsequently confirmed the name to other news organisations
on Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that
Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch
Al Qaeda suspects.”
The New York Times reporters Douglas Jehl
and David Rohde wrote in the article published Monday,
“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 Al Qaeda communications system where
information was transferred via coded messages.”
Once the Americans blew Khan’s cover, Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) were willing to give
Rohde more details in Karachi.
Khan had been secretly apprehended by
ISI in mid-July and persuaded to become 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 New York Times’ Douglas Jehl about him.
ISI told Reuters, “He sent encoded e-mails and received
encoded replies. He’s a great hacker and even the
US agents said he was a computer whiz … He was cooperating
with interrogators on Sunday and Monday and sent e-mails
on both days.” This proves that the Bush administration
just blew the cover of one of the most important assets
inside Al Qaeda that the US has ever had.
Prof. Juan Cole of the University of Michigan’s
analysis is more daring, “The announcement of Khan’s
name forced the British to arrest 12 members of an al-Qaeda
cell prematurely, before they had finished gathering the
necessary evidence against them via Khan. Apparently they
feared that the cell members would scatter as soon as
they saw that Khan had been compromised. (They would have
known he was a double agent, since they got emails from
him Sunday and Monday!) One of the 12 has already had
to be released for lack of evidence, a further fallout
of the Bush SNAFU (situation normal all fouled up). It
would be interesting to know if other cell members managed
to flee. Why in the world would Bush administration officials
out a double agent working for Pakistan and the US against
Al-Qaeda? In a way, the motivation does not matter. If
the Reuters story is true, this slip is a major screw-up
that casts the gravest doubts on the competency of the
administration to fight a war on terror. Either the motive
was political calculation, or it was sheer stupidity.
They don’t deserve to be in power either way.”
Reuters quoted British security expert
Kevin Rosser speculating what might have been the political
calculation if that was the motivation. He said such a
disclosure was a risk that came with staging public alerts,
but that authorities were meant to take special care not
to ruin ongoing operations. “When these public announcements
are made they have to be supported with some evidence,
and in addition to creating public anxiety and fatigue
you can risk revealing sources and methods of sensitive
operations,” he said.
Prof. Cole speculates that the scenario
could have been like this. “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 re-elected in the short term. On
the other hand, sheer stupidity cannot be underestimated
as an explanatory device in Washington politics.”
