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Mon. Aug 09, 2004

Wrath Over Khan

I wrote about something over the weekend that still has me angry, Terror Idiots (with a number of links in the comments, too). It was (finally) the lead story on CNN’s site this morning.

And now, a little bipartisan heat is being applied:

It is not clear who was the first to disclose Khan’s name, but his unmasking triggered criticism on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as speculation about the motives behind the leak. Security and terrorism are top issues for both parties in this year’s U.S. presidential elections.

“I respectfully request an explanation to me and any other member of Congress who might wish one of who leaked this Mr. Khan’s name, for what reason it was leaked, and whether … reports that this leak compromised future intelligence activity are accurate,” Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, wrote in a letter to White House domestic security adviser Frances Townsend on August 8.

Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia, said on television on Sunday: “In this situation, in my view, they should have kept their mouth shut and just said, ‘We have information, trust us.’”

Terrorism experts said the reasons for the release of Khan’s name could range from a judgment error to a sophisticated ploy designed to put al Qaeda on edge about the extent to which the network has been infiltrated by moles.

One former senior U.S. intelligence official said he suspected a political motive. “I don’t think that the U.S intelligence community has shown enough creativity over the last few years for anyone to think of anything as smart as misdirection, or trying to send signals to al Qaeda,” he said.

Reuters: “White House asked to explain leak”

My guess is that the administration will say that Dr. Condoleezza Rice already answered the question on Sunday on CNN:

BLITZER: Let’s talk about some of the people who have been picked up, mostly in Pakistan, over the last few weeks. In mid-July, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. There is some suggestion that by releasing his identity here in the United States, you compromised a Pakistani intelligence sting operation, because he was effectively being used by the Pakistanis to try to find other al Qaeda operatives. Is that true?

RICE: Well, I don’t know what might have been going on in Pakistan. I will say this, that we did not, of course, publicly disclose his name. One of them…

BLITZER: He was disclosed in Washington on background.

RICE: On background. And the problem is that when you’re trying to strike a balance between giving enough information to the public so that they know that you’re dealing with a specific, credible, different kind of threat than you’ve dealt with in the past, you’re always weighing that against kind of operational considerations. We’ve tried to strike a balance. We think for the most part, we’ve struck a balance, but it’s indeed a very difficult balance to strike.

BLITZER: Had he been flipped, in the vernacular, was he cooperating with Pakistani intelligence after he was arrested?

RICE: I don’t know the answer to that question, as to whether or not he was cooperating with them.

CNN Transcripts: “Wolf Blitzer Interview With Condoleezza Rice”

Dr. Rice admits an anonymous someone in the administration released Khan’s name, but places some semantic distinction in the fact it was given “on background,” (and also claims to know nothing of what’s going on in Pakistan, while the Washington Post said the sting was “organized by the CIA”). Now, I’m not a journalist, and I don’t play semantic games, so I’ll call that a cowardly distinction.

As I understand it, “on background” means, [1] the information is not intended for direct publication (it merely points the reporter in the right direction, so he/she can seek confirmation from an alternate source, and then publish it), and [2] the person giving the information is to remain anonymous (in case it blows up in their face later).

I know, I know, this is how politics and journalism intersect inside the Beltway, and it’s nothing new. However, in this case we’re talking about an intel asset, one of supposed high value, allegedly still sending out encrypted e-mails to unravel more threads. That information should be kept secret. Period. Whether it is leaked via an anonymous background briefing or a plane pulling a banner over the Washington Post offices, it is still a national security secret. No matter how you let it out, it’s a stupid thing to do.

And that’s about the nicest thing I can say about it. I’m not alone in that feeling, though Britain’s Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is considerably more moderated in tone than I am. Still, his column is titled “Why I refuse to feed the media’s summer frenzy”:

…over the last four days there has been column inch after column inch devoted to the fact that in the United States there is often high-profile commentary followed, as in the most current case, by detailed scrutiny, with the potential risk of inviting ridicule.

In Britain the accusation is the opposite. It is that we don’t say enough. We don’t comment often enough. We don’t speculate enough. In other words, we don’t sufficiently raise the profile – and therefore the concern – about terrorism.

Of course, it is not possible for me to comment on last week’s arrests and the action which has followed. These are operational matters [...] I issued an appropriate statement and I refused to comment further. Why?

Because had I done so without having anything additional to add, I would have merely added to the speculation, to the hype, to the desire for something to say for its own sake. In other words, to feed the news frenzy in a slack news period.

Is that really the job of a senior cabinet minister in charge of counter-terrorism? To feed the media? To increase concern? To have something to say, whatever it is, in order to satisfy the insatiable desire to hear somebody saying something?

David Blunkett: “Why I refuse to feed the media’s summer frenzy”

Interesting questions, with quite different answers on the two sides of the Atlantic. In Britain, their version of “Tom Ridge” is content to say that their security services are “protecting us in a way that I desire, you desire and we all expect from them. That is all, at the moment, there is to be said.”

As he notes, you’re going to get criticized by some segment of the spectrum whether you give no information, or too much. Therefore, why not stop worrying about that inevitable criticism, and simply let your security mandate guide you. In almost all other cases, the Bush administration’s general policy is to play it so close to the vest it hurts. They don’t release squat that they don’t have to.

Why did they have to release Khan’s name? I can find no satisfying answer.

It angers me, and it makes me wonder about people’s priorities. While many are busy investigating the absolutely critical question of where John Kerry was on Christmas 36 years ago, some folk(s) in our government are outing an Al Qaeda capture who had been turned into a mole. And it appears he was outed in a partisan effort to answer criticism about the current terror alert, an outing that angered not one, but two allies.

Of those two issues, which do you think will impact our future more?

Which event is more likely to knock someone like me “off the fence”? Where John Kerry was when I was 10 years old, or the apparently deliberate botching of perhaps the best source we had within an organization that has vowed to try and kill us all?

Conventional Wisdom has long been that this could very well be a One Issue election. I’ve stated before that it largely will be for me. I guess that’s why I couldn’t care less about Christmas, 1968, and am damn angry about the absolutely unnecessary leaking of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan’s name.

I even find it hard to laugh at the obvious irony from this event: whereas government officials had once said they believed there was a serious threat because of the high level of specific chatter, last Friday they were warning of “a troublesome drop in so-called ‘chatter’ among suspected terrorists.” The chatter had ominously almost stopped, and that fact worried them as well. Gee, could the chatter have stopped last week because, at about the same time, the Al Qaeda network heard on the news that their Chief Chatter Buddy had been busted?

Before someone tries to pin me down like a prosecutor, yes, there is enough blame to spread outside the Bush administration. Nominees include those like Howard Dean who immediately pounced to claim the alert was a political ploy (I have very little doubt the alert is justified, myself), the media for beating that horse to death, the intelligence official(s) who felt compelled to point out (anonymously, of course) that some of the intel was three to four years old, and the media for beating that horse to death (how many horses have been whipped to death this year?). This bleating partisan maelstrom set the stage for the leaking of Khan’s name.

And, no, Mr. Prosecutor, I cannot prove that the release of Khan’s name was not part of some ongoing brilliant counter-counter-espionage sting by our intelligence services. I can only look at the recent history of our intelligence services (as well as the results they’ve garnered), and then apply Occam’s Razor.

And that’s why I’m angry.