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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
The Bush administration has a dangerous pattern of exposing intelligence operations for political gain, and that's undermining its war on terrorism.
Aug 13, 2004 | When the Bush administration revealed that its recent decision to raise the terror-threat levels in New York and Washington was based largely on 3- to 4-year-old intelligence, it found itself under great pressure to prove the heightened alert was not simply a cynical manipulation of public fear for political purposes. In an apparent move to prove the validity of the threat, it released the name of a Pakistani al-Qaida operative, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, who had been captured in Pakistan on July 12 and was providing extremely valuable intelligence, including the information about plots against specific U.S. targets.
On Aug. 8, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice defended the White House's action, saying Khan's name was provided only "on background." While this quieted domestic critics, the move had a huge cost: the loss of a strategic intelligence asset who might eventually have helped dismantle the al-Qaida leadership in Southwest Asia.
Pakistani and British intelligence officials expressed dismay at the revelation. Pakistan lost a valuable asset in a sting operation, leading some al-Qaida suspects to change their hideouts, and Britain was compelled the next day to arrest 12 terror suspects it had been watching. What's more, after Khan's name was revealed, CNN reported, U.S. government sources said that they noticed "a drop in intercepted communications among suspected terrorists."
Critics of the Bush administration from both parties as well as some U.S. intelligence experts are now wondering whether the administration is completely incompetent in the handling of classified intelligence of strategic importance or whether there is a more philosophically based, policy-related explanation for its release of the Pakistani operative's name. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., immediately demanded an explanation from Bush's homeland security advisor, Frances Townsend. And Sen. George Allen, R-Va., declared on television last Sunday: "They [members of the administration] should have kept their mouth shut and just said, 'We have information, trust us.'"
Although there has been some speculation that the administration's revelation was a sophisticated move to destabilize al-Qaida,
In the short three-week period between Khan's capture and the ill-considered release of his name, significant damage was done to the al-Qaida leadership. His assistance was crucial in the arrest of a number of al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan, including Ahmed Ghailani, who was involved in the simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. With Khan's help, British authorities were able to arrest an entire al-Qaida cell in the U.K. Unfortunately, another cell that had been planning attacks on London's Heathrow Airport is believed to have been alerted by the announcement of Khan's arrest and has since eluded capture.
Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident but just the latest callous act of disregard for the sensitivity, viability and credibility of global intelligence operations by the Bush administration.
In the fall of 2001 -- while images of gallant American Special Forces and Northern Alliance tribesmen galloping on horseback across the central Asian steppes en route to Kabul, Afghanistan, captured the American public's attention -- the primary debate in Washington policy circles focused on the next phase in the "war on terror." Those who understood the transnational, nonstate nature of the al-Qaida threat envisioned a broad, multilateral strategy and were particularly adamant about the need to confront the threat on a global scale as quickly as possible. They deemed it important to demonstrate U.S. resolve by striking at the al-Qaida network not only in Afghanistan but wherever it existed. There was much discussion about possible campaigns in Somalia and even more discussion about Yemen.
