Subcontracting the hunt for bin Laden

[Snazzy]

Subcontracting the hunt for bin Laden
The twisted relationship between the Bush administration and Pakistan's military regime, driven by a mutual desire for survival, is undermining the war on terror.

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By Husain Haqqani


Aug. 17, 2004 | The day after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced a new orange alert, the New York Times reported that the information leading to the alert came from the arrest in Lahore, Pakistan, three weeks earlier of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a computer wizard linked to al-Qaida. It was later revealed that since his arrest Khan had been working as a double agent for the Pakistanis and the Americans, passing on al-Qaida leaders' messages to its operatives and helping uncover members of the global terrorist network. Khan's identification in the New York Times ended his usefulness in ferreting out terrorists -- a tragic loss in the war on terror.

Reporters initially fingered American officials for leaking Khan's name. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice all but acknowledged the administration's mistake in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. The matter was then written off as another blunder caused by the fog of war.

But in fact, U.S. officials did not leak Khan's name. The first leak of Khan's name, according to well-informed, reliable sources in the region who spoke on condition of anonymity, came from Pakistani officials in Islamabad -- who perhaps were motivated by eagerness to show off their success in arresting al-Qaida figures or, more ominously, by a desire to sabotage the penetration of al-Qaida that Khan's arrest had made possible. A second Pakistani leak to Reuters, blaming the Americans as the source of the leak, served to absolve the Pakistanis of any responsibility in breaking up new al-Qaida cells -- an important move domestically.

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Musharraf's military regime, too, seems eager, as the U.S. election season heats up, to claim credit for its "cooperation" in the U.S.-led war against terrorism. Usually reticent Pakistani officials, especially Interior Minister Faisal Hayat, have been unusually forthcoming about recent successes in arresting al-Qaida-linked terrorist suspects, including some Pakistani nationals. Hayat was even willing to hold a late-night press briefing, just hours before Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was to formally accept his party's nomination at the Democratic Convention in Boston, to announce the arrest of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the man wanted for the 1998 terrorist bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/08/17/pakistan_terrorism/index.html

(A different take on Khan's outing that's well worth considering I think, although the US was more complicit in this than the author seems to suggest.

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Another job outsourced!

Basstid!

--bkl