[BlackGriffen]

Oh, the stupidity! It's going to be really easy to get more, considering how the Bush administration keeps outing its own spies for political reasons. I freely admit that Bush was in a double bind: accusing of crying wolf without this account, damaging America's future with it. I really wish he had just sucked it up, said, "Our information is new, but the source is not something I can reveal at this time." At least making sure that the guy was safely away from Al Qaeda would have gone a long way. But, no! They have to put the double agent's life in danger and damage this nation's credibility to keep double agents secret.

But what am I saying? This administration outs its own agents on a whim (Valerie Plame), why should the double agents expect less?

All I've got to say is that they had better find the scum who outed this one because this is a very real loss for America.

ISLAMABAD/LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. officials providing justification for anti-terrorism alerts revealed details about a Pakistani secret agent, and confirmed his name while he was working under cover in a sting operation, Pakistani sources said on Friday.

A Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested in Lahore secretly last month, had been actively cooperating with intelligence agents to help catch al Qaeda operatives when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers.

"After his capture he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts," a Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters. "He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He's a great hacker and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz."

"He was cooperating with interrogators on Sunday and Monday and sent e-mails on both days," the source said.

The New York Times published a story on Monday saying U.S. 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. U.S. officials subsequently confirmed the name to other news organizations on Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch al Qaeda suspects.

BlackGriffen

[ThinkInsane]

From the article, it sounds like he is doing his thing while in custody, so his life probably isn't in jeopardy. They will probably put him in some sort of witness protection thing, or if he was working to get a reduced sentence, he'll probably be in a secure population in prison. How did the NYT get the name in the first place? Once they ran it, all the gov did was confirm it. Seems the damage was already done, and who knows what kind of deals had been struck?

[dialo]

Originally posted by ThinkInsane:
They will probably put him in some sort of witness protection thing, or if he was working to get a reduced sentence, he'll probably be in a secure population in prison.

He's in pakistan. He'll probably end up in guantanamo or get killed by AQ guys in pakistan's ISI.

[MacGorilla]

Doesn't seem like he was a double agent in the traditional sense.

[TailsToo]

I think the issue was that he was working through the internet to set up other cells for capture, and once his name was out there, those he was manipulating caught on. Apparently England had to move in on suspects before they were ready because they feared that with the news, the terrorists would catch on and find a way to escape before they could be caught

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by TailsToo:
I think the issue was that he was working through the internet to set up other cells for capture, and once his name was out there, those he was manipulating caught on. Apparently England had to move in on suspects before they were ready because they feared that with the news, the terrorists would catch on and find a way to escape before they could be caught

Precisely. It wasn't as bad as I'd thought (I misread, too, sometimes), but still a loss of a seemingly very valuable resource for short term political gain.

BG

[dialo]

Originally posted by ThinkInsane:
. How did the NYT get the name in the first place?

Condi reportedly admitted to Wolf Blitzer that an admin member gave the name during a background interview.

[dialo]

So this failure by the administration forced the british to prematurely capture 13 suspected al-qaeda members and allowed 5 to escape. The pattern just never ends with this administration.

http://www.juancole.com/2004_08_01_j...03103143466382

[Zimphire]

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...p;section=news

Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia also questioned the release of Khan's name on television on Sunday, saying: "In this situation, in my view, they should have kept their mouth shut and just said, 'We have information, trust us."'

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said it was a hard line to draw between giving the public too much or too little information about terrorist threats.

"We did not, of course, publicly disclose his name," Rice said on Sunday, adding that it had been given "on background."

Khan's capture was part of a Pakistani crackdown, which began a month ago and has dealt al Qaeda a major blow.

[BlackGriffen]

Originally posted by Zimphire:
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.j...p;section=news

Republican Sen. George Allen of Virginia also questioned the release of Khan's name on television on Sunday, saying: "In this situation, in my view, they should have kept their mouth shut and just said, 'We have information, trust us."'

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said it was a hard line to draw between giving the public too much or too little information about terrorist threats.

"We did not, of course, publicly disclose his name," Rice said on Sunday, adding that it had been given "on background."

Khan's capture was part of a Pakistani crackdown, which began a month ago and has dealt al Qaeda a major blow.

Well, at least it was intentional. That means that they don't necessarily have to fcuk up again in the future.

It also really makes me wonder about the motivation, but that's a pointless debate if there ever was one.

BlackGriffen

[Millennium]

The public -rightly or wrongly- demanded more information than "We have our sources; trust us". This is what it means to be given that information. Is it really worth it?

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by Millennium:
The public -rightly or wrongly- demanded more information than "We have our sources; trust us". This is what it means to be given that information. Is it really worth it?

Exactly.

[dialo]

Originally posted by Millennium:
The public -rightly or wrongly- demanded more information than "We have our sources; trust us". This is what it means to be given that information. Is it really worth it?

This is not an accurate characterization. You can't the the rarest and most sensitive of possible circumstances and extrapolate that onto the handling of all intelligence. If anything, the situation with Iraq demonstrated conclusively the problems associated with that.

The fact of the the matter is that some 90% of our intelligence comes from open sources. Of the remainder, only ~2% or less comes from humint, and a smaller percentage of that from covert humint. On top of that, of that small percentage of covert humint information sources, only a very, very small number are actually valid sources, as demonstrated publicly with the INC.

It really should have been a no-brainer for this bush admin official to keep his or her mouth shut on this one. But that has absolutely nothing to do with overall secrecy at all. That's just a political argument disconnected from the reality of modern intelligence analysis, citizen awareness and government secrecy.

[Lerkfish]

Originally posted by Millennium:
The public -rightly or wrongly- demanded more information than "We have our sources; trust us". This is what it means to be given that information. Is it really worth it?

LOL!you're contrasting two examples where the administration screwed up and saying do you want screwup A or screwupB?

no, we want competent leadership. Obviously, the current administration cannot be trusted.

[tie]

Originally posted by Lerkfish:
LOL!you're contrasting two examples where the administration screwed up and saying do you want screwup A or screwupB?

Of course what we got was screwup A and screwup B.