The Ming Report

ON BACKGROUND

August 9, 2004 - Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan. Remember that name. It is quite a mouthful. Someone in the Bush Administration, we don’t know who, could not wait to spit it out in a press briefing on Sunday, August 2nd, The next day Pakistani Intelligence was credited with having arrested Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan with guidance from the Central Intelligence Agency. Kahn was said to have been the one man hub of an Al Qaeda communications network that utilized hand carried CD-ROMs and coded messages posted on the Internet. Files found on Kahn’s computer was said to have been the source of information used by the Bush Administration in its decision to announce that Al Qaeda was planning to attack financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC. The unprecedented press briefing by unnamed high intelligence officials detailing the sources and methods by which the information was collected followed on the heels of Secretary Ridge’s announcement of the elevated threat level and in the face of widespread cynicism that suggested that there was a political component to the Secretary’s warning to the American People.

The cynicism was not unfounded. The new terror alert vied with the Kerry Campaign’s post-convention for space on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers. Secretary Ridge took pains to include a line crediting the President’s leadership in his announcement. The timing and the specific content followed after an earlier and vague warning that Al Qaeda was poised to launch an attack timed to affect the 2004 election. It certainly was in keeping with the concerted effort of the Bush re-election campaign to frame the campaign as a referendum on the war on terror. The press briefing seemed designed to rebut the idea that the warning had more to do with the war for votes than the war against terror.

Remember the 911 Commission report? Remember the Senate Intelligence Committee’s critical report on pre-911 intelligence gathering. Both bi-partisan reports were critical of the intelligence establishment for having relied too strongly on electronic interception and putting too little emphasis on human intelligence. That deficiency was cited as a major reason why two administrations passed over the clues that might have detected the 911 plot. Remember that name, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan. Pakistani intelligence sources have confirmed that he was a CIA mole who had worked his way into the Al Qaeda organization as a computer whiz and when his name was leaked it compromised a whole host of ongoing anti-terrorist operations in Pakistan, in Britain and in the United States.

When she was confronted with the question of why the leak occurred Condoleezza Rice said that it was difficult to draw the line between too little public information and too much. Pressed she said, “We did not, of course, publicly disclose his name. It was given on background.'' It was given on background and that excuses the unnamed high intelligence official who gave it out. The press then and not the not the Bush Administration was responsible for leaking the identify of the mole who had been painstakingly implanted in a key position. Taking responsibility is not the Bush Administration’s strong suit.

As a result of the news set in motion by the Administration’s use of intelligence information to further its political agenda a few Al Qaeda operatives identified through Kahn’s work have been arrested in Pakistan and Britain. But the active cells in the United States that might have been revealed had Kahn’s work continued remain in place. But it was not an intelligence failure because it was “on background”.