"The last ten days of July deadline has been given repeatedly by visitors to Islamabad and during [ul-Haq's] meetings in Washington." Says McCormack: "I'm aware of no such comment." But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.Pakistani police captured Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a suspect in the 1998 embassy bombings, on Sunday, July 25, 2004. His capture was annouced a midnight Pakistan time on Thursday, July 29, about seven hours before Kerry gave his acceptance speech. Khan provided information that led to Ghailani's arrest.
some current and former American officials fear that, by broadcasting his name around the world, the Pakistanis have reduced the value of the intelligence that interrogators can extract from him. "Now, anything that he was involved in is being shredded, burned, and thrown in a river," a senior counterterrorism official told the Los Angeles Times. "We have to assume anyone affiliated with this guy is on the run...when, usually, we can get great stuff as long as we can keep it quiet."The Bush administration has trouble with guys named Khan. If they're not blowing their double agents for political gain, they're giving them a pass for running an illicit nuclear weapons bazaar during a WMD-focused War on Terror. KHAAAAAAAN!!!!!!!
The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.
Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.
...
"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ...There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'"
Methinks there is a real tangled mess in the relationship between W, his Pa, and the Pak -- going back to the BCCI mess.
Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, described by Pakistani intelligence officials as computer engineer, was arrested July 13, reportedly with help of CIA; Pakistanis say he used and helped operate secret Qaeda communications system where information was transferred via coded messages; senior American intelligence official says 'documentary evidence' found after his capture was most detailed he has ever seen; that evidence, called 'treasure trove' by senior American official, was reported urgently to Washington on July 30, elevating significance of other intelligence information gathered in recent weeks from Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia as well as Pakistan;It's sort of ambiguous in the abstract, but the Pak are talking about him and the Americans are talking about the intel.
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Coincidentally, August 1st the Homeland Security Threat Level was raised to Code Orange for the financial services sector in New York City, Northern New Jersey and Washington, DC.
I remember it well because a client of our security firm was one of the NYC stock exchanges, and there was some concern afoot.
ABC News just reported that the British authorities say they have evidence that the London attacks last week were an operation planned by Al Qaeda for the last two years.
Not reported by ABC was that after his arrest Khan started working for our side - sending emails to his other Al Qaeda buddies, working as our mole.
What is the Khan connection to the London bombings? Well, intelligence officials at the time said that the plans discovered on Khan's computer included attacks on London's transport system as well as Heathrow Airport.
Furthermore, according to Americablog, " ABC reports that names in Khan's computer matched a suspected cell of British citizens of Pakistani decent, many of who lived near the town of Luton, England - Luton is the same town where, not coincidentally, last week's London bombing terrorists began their day. According to ABC, authorities thought they had stopped the subway plot with the arrest of more than a dozen people last year associated with Khan. Obviously, they hadn't.
“This was an operation the Brits thought they caught and stopped in time, but they were wrong. The piece of the puzzle ABC missed is that this is an operation the Bush administration helped botch last year. It seems at the time it was notable, yet basically ignored in the reportage of the event, that Khan was a deep undercover mole who had been flipped to work for the West."
Security experts in 2004 were quoted as being "shocked" when administration officials outed Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan as an al Qaeda mole.
Jane's Defense security expert Tim Ripley pondered, "You have to ask: what are they doing compromising a deep mole within al Qaeda, when it's so difficult to get these guys in there in the first place? It goes against all the rules of counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, running agents and so forth. It's not exactly cloak and dagger undercover work if it's on the front pages every time there's a development, is it?"
At the time, Juan Cole noted that "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." At least one of those people was subsequently released due to lack of evidence.
Connecting the dots between the Khan story leak and the London bombing: Seems that some of the non-arrested cell members that were tipped by the news announcement of Khan's capture took the hint, fled, and escaped the ensuing dragnet.
According to some reports coming out of the current investigation of the London bombing, some of the actors involved in the London transport bombing may have ties to those escapees. This investigation (resonating the immortal words of Scott McClellan in not commenting on Karl Rove) is still developing.
However, if this blowback is in any part true about as having arisen from our blowing Khan, we just may have a serious problem with outing our own critical anti-terrorism undercover agents in Washington...and that's true even without referencing Plamegate.
posted by Dunvegan at 2:12 AM on July 15, 2005