August 08, 2004
Cover Blown?
Juan Cole writes:
In other words, the Bush administration just blew the cover of one of the most important assets inside al-Qaeda that the US has ever had.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 twelve has already had to be released for lack of evidence, a further fall-out of the Bush SNAFU. It would be interesting to know if other cell members managed to flee.
He also suggests that the motivation was stupidity in service of politics. They needed to provide some credible evidence for the recent terror alert, so dropped Khan's name to prove they had an actual reason for it. So, of course, it's all the Democrats' fault for questioning the timing.