[It was the famous computer guy. And it seems the reason they did it was because when people pointed out the news in their fake NY/Washington alert was 3 years old they panicked and jettisoned everything in a mad effort to bluster.]
[It also seems that the reason for all the other raids in the UK that have been in the papers this week was because all on-going operations had to be immediately wrapped up because blowing this guy's cover alerting everyone we were on to them]
[This administration is beyond parody. It's difficult to imagine an administration that was weaker or more incompetent on terrorism.]
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040806/ts_nm/security_dc
Reuters
Pakistan Source Under Cover When U.S. Confirmed Name
Fri Aug 6, 6:54 PM ET
By Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff
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.
President Bush (news - web sites) defended the "orange alert" raised
in New York and Washington on Sunday and said his government had an
obligation to inform the public of genuine threats.
"When we find out intelligence that is real, that threatens people, I
believe we have an obligation as government to share that with
people," Bush told journalists.
BRITISH SWOOP
A U.S. official said on Friday one of 12 suspects caught in raids in
Britain this week was a senior al Qaeda figure, and Washington would
try to extradite him.
But British police said they had been forced to carry out their swoop
more hastily than planned -- a day after Khan's name appeared in the
New York Times as the source of information behind the U.S. alerts.
On Monday evening, after Khan's name appeared, Pakistani officials
moved him to a secret location.
The next day British police mounted the sweep that caught the 12
suspects. Such raids are normally carried out late at night or in the
early morning, when suspects might be at home and less likely to
resist.
But showing clear signs of haste, British police pounced in daylight.
Some suspects were taken in shops; others were caught in a high-speed
car chase.
A British anti-terrorism police source would not comment on the reason
for their quick action, but confirmed the raids were carried out
faster than planned: "It would be a fair assessment to say there was
an urgency. Something can happen that prompts us to take action faster
than we would," he told Reuters.
A U.S. counterterrorism official told Reuters on Friday that one of
the 12 British detainees, known as Abu Musa al-Hindi or Abu Eisa
al-Hindi, was a key al Qaeda operative in Britain: "This arrest is a
big one."
WASHINGTON TO SEEK EXTRADITION
He said Hindi was centrally involved in an effort to case possible
targets in the United States for al Qaeda attacks, and said Washington
would seek to extradite him.
Britain has yet to identify or charge any of the suspects or confirm
whether Hindi is among them.
Intelligence and security experts said they were surprised Washington
would reveal information that could expose the name of a source during
an ongoing law enforcement operation.
"If it's true that the Americans have unintentionally revealed the
identity of another nation's intelligence agent, who appears to be
working in the good of all of us, that is not only a fundamental
intelligence flaw its also a monumental foreign relations blunder,"
security expert Paul Beaver, a former publisher of Jane's Defense
Weekly, told Reuters.
Kevin Rosser, security expert at the London-based consultancy Control
Risks Group, 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.
In a separate case, British police have arrested Londoner Babar Ahmad
under a U.S. warrant alleging that he helped fund militants in
Afghanistan (news - web sites) and Chechnya (news - web sites). At his
first court appearance on Friday Ahmed said he would fight
extradition.
Copyright © 2004 Reuters Limited.