News Leak Blows Big Opportunity [Al Qaeda'a Man at the BBC]

Newsweek ^ | 8/14/03 | Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball

[TastyManatees]

News Leak Blows Big Opportunity
Newsweek Web Exclusive

While publicly congratulating themselves over the bust of an international arms dealer in an alleged plot to sell Russian-made surface-to-air missiles, top Justice Department officials are privately fuming over a premature news leak that may have blown a rare opportunity to penetrate Al Qaeda's arms-buying network, NEWSWEEK has learned.

THE FBI'S ARREST of London-based arms dealer Hemant Lakhani, 68, at a hotel room near Newark Liberty International Airport this week was supposed to be only an interim step in what officials hoped would be a far more meaningful long-term operation, law-enforcement sources said. The bureau's plan was to quickly flip Lakhani, a British citizen of Indian extraction, and then use him as an undercover informant who could lead agents to real-life Osama bin Laden operatives seeking sophisticated weapons. But those plans went awry late Tuesday afternoon when the Feds learned that the BBC was about to broadcast a sensational report on Lakhani's arrest by one of its star correspondents, Tom Mangold. The BBC story, based on an apparent leak from a law-enforcement source, had some key details wrong. For one thing, it falsely claimed that the arms dealer's attempted sale of a shoulder-fired SA-18 missile and launder was part of a plot by terrorists to shoot down Air Force One--a target that never actually came up in the discussions.

But even so, U.S. law-enforcement sources tell NEWSWEEK, the damage was done. The FBI had to abort its plan to recruit Lakhani as an informant and instead charged him today in federal court in Newark, N.J., with weapons smuggling and with providing material support to terrorists. Also arrested in the case were two alleged confederates--a New York City jeweler and a Malaysian businessman--who were charged with conspiring to operate an unlicensed money-transfer business.

The U.S. attorney in Newark, Christopher Christie, today called the arrest of Lakhani "an incredible triumph" during a press conference on the courthouse steps.

But in Washington, senior Justice Department officials were "not happy," said one law-enforcement official. "We didn't want this to get out before we could determine whether this guy would cooperate or not." For all the hoopla over the case, the official confirmed, it was essentially a government-arranged "sting" that never involved any contact with actual terrorists.

(Mangold told NEWSWEEK today that ABC News had sent out an internal "news flash" about the arrest of Lakhani at 4:22 p.m. ET--more than a half hour before the BBC first broadcast the story. But an ABC source said there was no such news flash and that the news organization learned about the story when it heard that BBC reporters were calling around to U.S. law-enforcement officials saying they intended to broadcast the story on their 10 p.m. [5 p.m. ET] broadcast.)

[TastyManatees]

DOJ initially intended to turn the arms dealer busted trying to sell a man-portable surface-to-air missile to undercover agents. In other words, had the BBC not revealed the information on the secret sting operation, the United States could have had gotten a man inside Al Qaeda to feed us all the information on their weaponry purchases. Then, once BBC destroyed the operation, causing the DOJ to be forced to prosecute one individual bent on harming us, instead of using him to take down all of Al Qaeda, ABC piled on by trying to claim there wasn't anything to the charges!

Tasty Manatees

[SwinneySwitch]

"...SA-18 missile and launder..."

Newsweek seeks proof readers!

[mhking]

AQ has folks everywhere. Why am I not surprised?

Walk softly and be prepared.

[MizSterious]

With "friends" like the media (BBC in this case), who needs enemies?

[MEG33]

We can't expect a news organization(especially BBC) to do what's best for the safety and well being of society ,particularly Americans,can we?!

[Gabrielle Reilly]

Follow up on the international arms dealer bust.

[trebb]

Sounds like the BBC is coming apart at the seams when it comes to aiding and abetting the terrorists, while rivaling the NYTimes for outright lies...

[RightWhale]

ABC piled on

Such big news a couple days ago, they caught a couple thugs with a rocket.

Now an even bigger story, a huge story, a story that proves the news media is actually working for the enemy, and does the media report it? Of course they did, says Bohannon, how else would you have learned about this.

Sure, but where is the rabid, breathless excitement this time? Where is the constant droning hitting the story over and over? Where is the 216-point headline? What does the glamorous Arianna have to say about this?

[DoctorMichael]

"..... BBC was about to broadcast a sensational report......"

The 'Beeb'{Snort}...........serving the public interest again. [/sarcasm]

[Gabrielle Reilly]

You may appreciate this article on related to media propaganda.

http://www.gabriellereillyweekly.com/full/statedepartment.html

[Cachelot]

News Leak Blows Big Opportunity

Yeah, well -- I see the BBC as a terrorist mouthpiece, like al Jazeera. Wonder how many AQ contacts are on the inside, just for opportunities like this. And watching for signs that says their colleagues had better bolt.

[JeeperFreeper]

Tasty- good post. I'm gonna get flamed here, but the real scoundrel here is the law enforcement person who leaked the information. Indeed, here in the USA such a person could get charged with obstruction of justice and interfering with an investigation.

[mewzilla]

Anyone else see the irony in Spikey Isikoff reporting on a news leak? And with the Beeb doing its level best to give aid and comfort to the enemy, who needs al Jazeera?

[Eva]

The BBC has been openly opposing the war in Iraq and Blair by every means possible. Here's a little background from the Wall Street Journal.


The BBC's Sexed-up Report
No bias, please. We're British.

Thursday, August 14, 2003 12:01 a.m.

The worst thing that can be said of a serious news organization is that it is cavalier about reporting the truth as it understands it. Gain a reputation for political bias in reports billed as objective and you can be sure to lose the trust--and patronage--of a significant part of your audience. So only a media giant whose shareholders are under lock and key could be as sanguine as the British Broadcasting Corporation's senior management has been after this week's embarrassing revelations.




The BBC, which is funded by a compulsory $180-a-year tax on every British household with a television, has effectively gone to war with the British government over its report that Prime Minister Tony Blair's top spokesman and adviser "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The May 29 report by Andrew Gilligan aired on the agenda-setting BBC Radio 4 "Today" program. It was then picked up by other reports and repeated in newspapers and broadcasts around the world.
David Kelly, a senior adviser to the Defense Ministry, was the source for both Mr. Gilligan and a separate story filed by BBC "Newsnight" reporter Susan Watts. Ms. Watts's report on the dossier never charged Downing Street and Mr. Blair's chief press spokesman Alastair Campbell with deliberate tampering--and particularly with inserting a sensational but unreliable claim that Saddam could launch a WMD attack in 45 minutes. During the inquiry yesterday into the suicide of Dr. Kelly, Ms. Watts blew Mr. Gilligan's tendentious report out of the water.

Ms. Watts released a tape of her last conversation with Dr. Kelly, who makes clear that he is not in a position to assert that Mr. Campbell inserted anything into the intelligence report. Ms. Watts said of her conversations with Dr. Kelly, "He didn't say to me that the dossier was transformed in the last week and he certainly didn't say that the 45-minute claim was inserted either by Alastair Campbell or by anyone else in government. In fact, he denied specifically that Alastair Campbell was involved in the conversation on May 30 . . . he was very clear to me that the claim was in the original intelligence."

It's one thing for a news report to fall short. The normal course of events is for that failing to be acknowledged and corrected. But not only has the BBC refused to do so, it appears to have tried to bury the error. A July 6 minute from a meeting of the BBC Board of Governors lamented that "careful language had not been applied by Andrew Gilligan throughout." But otherwise the BBC has displayed no regrets.

Ms. Watts testified yesterday that the BBC seemed primarily interested in corroborating Mr. Gilligan's account rather than in the merits of her own reports: "I felt under some considerable pressure to reveal my source. I also felt the purpose of that was to help corroborate the Andrew Gilligan allegations and not for any proper news purpose." And, "I was most concerned that there was an attempt to mold [her reports] so that they were corroborative which I felt was misguided and false."

As our European editorial page deputy editor Mike Gonzalez wrote last week, the problem here goes beyond the errors of judgment made by one reporter and the unwillingness of his higher-ups to acknowledge responsibility. It speaks to a culture of bias that has crept into the news reporting of what was once a very fine media organization.

[Hoplite]

I'm not really clear on how an Indian was supposed to infiltrate Al Qaeda, or why a stool pigeon would be more effective than an undercover agent.

[1Old Pro]

The news media leaking stuff harming our intelligence operations. Tell me it ain't so.

[TastyManatees]

Flamed my foot, you're right about the tipper. Some idiot thought he was going to make headlines by feeding a bust to the press. That guy needs to be dropped right now and never picked back up. I mentioned the BBC reporter because he would probably serve as an example to other reporters.

By the way, I read it for the articles on international relations, I swear.

Tasty Manatees

[Republican Red]

I'm gobsmacked!

[TastyManatees]

TastyManatees.com had "Snooty" the manatee for a while, but bthen, I guess that's not even close.

Maybe if I get a Speedo and a digital camera...

Tasty Manatees

[corkoman]

Nice post tasty - 'specially for sigining up July 2003 - are there sea cows in virginia? I hoep so - maybe I can herd all the ones here in florida up there.