The Politics of Terrorism

The story about the outing, for immediate political advantage, of another intelligence "asset" in Pakistan has begun to emerge in fairly coherent fashion. As we understand the sequence of events, this is what happened:

1. July 29th the Democratic Convention gives a big boost to the international and national security "cred" of John Kerry.

2. August 1st, the Bush administration breaks up the Kerry boomlet by raising the terror alert to orange in New York and Washington, earning the suspicion that they're playing politics with terror.

3. Taking a drubbing in the press for getting everyone all upset with four-year-old intel, someone in the Bush administration, in a panic to recover the political upper hand on terror, leaks the information that the new orange alert is really based on brand-new inside information gathered from a newly captured Al Qaeda computer expert, and the Bush administration leaker even names the guy: Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan. Khan, after his secret capture in Pakistan in July, had been cooperating with Pakistani and CIA officials in tracking Al Qaeda operatives, especially in Great Britain and Nigeria. Pakistani intelligence told Reuters that Khan was still working undercover when the U.S. security status was raised to orange and his name appeared in a U.S. newspaper.

4. The leaking of Khan's name sets off falling dominoes around the world, as Al Qaeda leaders suddenly realize they've been "made" and start disappearing. British military officials are forced to scramble and hurriedly stage a daylight raid on Qaeda operatives in Great Britain, to avoid losing them because of the leaking of Khan's name. "Security analysts said the outing of the source was a major blunder that forced Britain to arrest 12 terrorism suspects in a hurry."

5. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York writes a letter to the White House demanding to know why Khan's name was leaked to the press, suggesting that the outing of Khan may have hurt the war on terror. Duh.

This sorry sequence of events led to this Reuters lead paragraph today: "The unmasking of an al Qaeda mole after a U.S. security alert points to disarray within U.S. intelligence and could mean President George W. Bush is accused of playing politics with security, the top U.S. election issue."

And to this assessment by David Wright-Neville, of the Monash Global Terrorism Research Unit in Australia: "If it's true, at the very least it would suggest a breakdown in communication between the Pakistanis and the Americans. At worst, it smacks of political opportunism and, if that is indeed the case, it suggests that political survival ranks more highly than generating potentially valuable information on the extent of the [Qaeda] network."