[Media-watch] Did White House sabotage terror war by leaking double agent's name? - DemocracyNow - 10/08/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/10/149253



Tuesday, August 10th, 2004
Did the White House Sabotage the War on Terror by Leaking the Name of an al
Qaeda Double Agent?



Pakistan and Britain are accusing the Bush administration of undermining its
fight against al Qaeda by revealing the name of computer expert Mohammad
Naeem Noor Khan while he was still working as an undercover double agent. We
speak with Middle East expert and online blogger Juan Cole. [includes rush
transcript]



New York senator Chuck Schumer is asking the White House to explain how and
why the name of an al-Qaeda informant arrested in Pakistan last month was
leaked to the press.

The name of computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan first appeared in The
New York Times last week. Pakistani intelligence sources are accusing the
Bush administration of undermining its fight against al Qaeda by revealing
Khan's name while he was still working as an undercover double agent.

Unnamed U.S. officials leaked his name to the press in an attempt of the
Bush administration to defend last week's heightened terror threat level. In
a letter to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice Schumer said that the
disclosure of Khan's capture may have complicated efforts to combat terror.

Meanwhile, The New York Times is reporting that a new portrait of al Qaeda's
inner workings is emerging from information seized after Khan's arrest. The
Times says intelligence analysts find that a new generation of al Qaeda
operatives appears to be filling a vacuum created when leaders were killed
or captured. The information reveals a far more complex picture of al Qaeda
than President Bush has presented on his campaign trail, where he has
claimed that much of al Qaeda"s leadership has been killed or captured.

  a.. Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at
the History Department of the University of Michigan. He runs an analytical
website called "Informed Comment" in which he provides a daily round-up of
news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. Cole speaks fluent
Arabic and Farsi and has lived all over the Muslim world for extended
periods of time.

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RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: To talk about the story of the exposing of Mohammad Khan, we
caught up with Middle East analyst, Juan Cole, professor of Modern Middle
East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan; he runs an
analytical website called Informed Comment, in which he provides a daily
roundup of news and events in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab World. He
speaks fluent Arabic and Persian and has lived around the Muslim world for
extended periods of time. We asked him about the exposing of Mohammad Khan.

JUAN COLE: This seems to me to be a really big story. It's amazing to me how
little play it has gotten in the American print press, as well as the cable
television news. It appears to be the case that a big break came in the al
Qaeda investigation in Pakistan in June. They arrested a man named Arrocci,
a cousin of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, one of the key Lieutenants. Arrocci in
turn gave up a younger man, 25 years old, named Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan,
who was living in Lahore and was a computer whiz; a hacker, he had been
providing electronic communication services to al Qaeda. Some of the
leadership, which is in the wilds of the no-man's land between Afghanistan
and Pakistan, had been getting him messages by courier, and he would encrypt
them and put them up on the web or send them by email. And he was arrested
July 13. It was possible for the Pakistani military intelligence to turn
him. So, he was willing to flip, and begin informing on al Qaeda and to keep
his correspondence on line; so they continued to correspond with him as
though he were still working for bin Laden. It was from his computer files
that the U.S. learned that there had been a plot against U.S. financial
institutions and other plots, some of them somewhat old. So, a decision was
made by the Bush White House to release this information. Tom Ridge came out
on Sunday, August 1, and announced that there was such a plot, and there
would be extra security for those institutions. In the course of the off the
record briefing that the Homeland Security did for the press, a Bush
administration official mentioned that the information had come from
Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan. Now, he was still a double agent and was
undercover, and was sending email messages, according to Pakistani sources,
on Sunday and the following Monday, to his al Qaeda contacts in London, who
still thought he was on the inside. So, the next day, "The New York Times"
printed the name on the principle that you don't tell the press something
you don't want to see in the newspaper, and that in turn caused a big furor
in Pakistan and the United Kingdom where there were ongoing sting operations
being run through Khan. The British had to swoop in and arrest 13 of Khan's
correspondents, lest they scatter once they heard he had been arrested. In
fact, they lost five of them. Many of them they're going to have to release
for lack of evidence. The cases have not been made. Hayat, the Pakistani
Interior Minister, is furious. He said Khan is the kind of asset that could
have led to bin Laden himself, had he not been outed.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to professor Juan Cole. His blog, juancole.com.
How do you know that he was a double agent? What is this based on?

JUAN COLE: Well, there are two indications of this. First of all, this is
what Pakistani intelligence sources told Reuters last Friday in Karachi. So,
the Pakistanis maintain it. Hayat has implicitly endorsed this information,
and other Pakistani Ministers, Rasheed Ahmed, for instance, have admitted
it. So, the other thing is that it's very clear from the reaction in
Britain, where people have been unwilling to come out and say this, that
they are very upset. Mi-5 has actually given an interview to "The New York
Times" in which they have complained about the damage that was done to the
ongoing cases. So, both sources that have are talked to journalists in
Pakistan and in the United Kingdom have confirmed this story. The Bush
administration officials' line on it, and Condaleeza Rice was on CNN Sunday,
was to admit that a Bush administration official did in fact provide Khan's
name to the press on background, but then to say that they don't know if he
was a double agent. This just seems to be disingenuous.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what happened with Condoleezza Rice in her
interview with Wolf Blitzer, CNN, and then on "background" with Wolf
Blitzer.

JUAN COLE: That was actually a mistake on my part. In the course of his
interview with her -- I have to say, Wolf was on top of the story in a way
that most television journalists have not been-- he asked her about the
incident, and she admitted that the name had been in fact provided to the
press on background when the Ridge briefing was done the previous Sunday.
Then she also admitted -- then she said she didn't know if he was a double
agent. And later in the broadcast, Wolf had two senators on, Charles Schumer
and George Allen, and he said to them that Condoleeza had admitted this to
him, and I misheard him. I thought he said she told him something more on
background, but he was referring to the fact that the reporters have been
told this on background. I'm sorry, I got that mixed up. But in any case,
that the Bush administration released his name has been confirmed by the
National Security Adviser, and it seems to me it's just unbelievable that
this could happen. It's an incredible screw-up and it endangers us all.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain further why it endangers everyone, and why you think
that the U.S. was willing to give him up, even while he was undercover?

JUAN COLE: Well, to take the second question first, it seems clear to me
that the Bush administration went public with what had been found on Khan's
computers for political advantage. Everyone knows that whenever you mention
terrorism and al Qaeda, Bush's numbers go up. It may also be that they made
a calculation that this information was likely to become public during the
campaign, and if they had not released it, it would look as though they
weren't on the ball, it would be used against them. So, either for positive
reasons or negative reason, they decided to go public with it. The British
political establishment is deeply critical of this decision. They don't
believe it should have been made public. And the Home Secretary, David
Blunkett, has written an Op-Ed in the Guardian criticizing the Bush
administration for having done this. But that decision was made. Everything
followed from the decision. Once you decided to let the information out,
that we now know about these plots that were being hatched before September
11, then, of course, the reporters are going to say, well how do you know
that? And the potential for either an inadvertent leak of the name or for a
deliberate decision to leak the name just to make the case solid was there.
So, it all followed from this decision to go public, a decision which I
think can't be entirely removed from the campaign politics.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Mohammad Khan sent emails, five or six emails, is that
right, to contacts in the United States?

JUAN COLE: Yes. At least this is what has been reported in the press.
There's some evidence on his computer of five or six contacts in the U.S.

AMY GOODMAN: What happens to him now? Where is he being held? What happens
to the people he's contacted?

JUAN COLE: The intelligence and security people in each of the countries
that he had contacts in are swooping in and arresting his contacts. A Senior
Radicalist Islamist was hiding in Dubai and they arrested him. He's
implicated in attempts against the life of Pakistani Dictator Pervez
Musharaaf. In Britain they have swooped down on people. If the information
in the computer were sufficiently detailed to allow the U.S. to find the
five or six people that he was talking to here, certainly, they will be
arrested as well. Because his name was revealed in the press, they have
choice but to attempt to arrest these people. In many instances, they may
not actually have enough evidence against them to hold them, because being
an email contact with Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan is not a crime.

AMY GOODMAN: And your read on the Ridge news conference where he announced
the upping of the security alert?

JUAN COLE: Well, I believe that it probably shouldn't have been done. We now
know that the information was very old. It is often said by the Bush
administration officials that it had been updated as recently as January of
2004, but "The Guardian" has revealed now that what they really mean is that
the file had been opened as recently as January of 2004. No new information
was added to it. We don't have evidence of ongoing operational activities.
So, it seems as though in retrospect, it was old information. You know, I
really don't want to be completely cynical about these things. I have to
believe that Tom Ridge really wants to protect the United States. So, I'm
reluctant to come out and say, well, he made this announcement to get Bush
re-elected. But it's awfully suspicious that the announcement came right
after the Democratic Convention, and it came on a day when churches were
being bombed in Baghdad, and it came on a Sunday so that everybody knew that
it would hit the newspapers Monday morning. It would be the top line on all
of the newspapers in the country. Then the clumsy way it was done and the
revealing of Khan's identity so that they dried up this potentially very
rich well of further tracking and information which might have led to bin
Laden himself, might have led to a very severe crippling of al Qaeda
operational capabilities, might have led to successful court cases against a
whole range of operatives in London and elsewhere. In retrospect, this seems
to me to have been a mistake and hard to separate from politics, at least.

AMY GOODMAN: Juan Cole. He has a blog, juancole.com. He is professor of
Modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan.
This is DemocracyNow!.