Thus insuring discontinuance of that communications channel,
and the loss of any intel which could have been gleaned from it.
Yep, sounds like something we'd want to do. ;-)
Of course what you imply would ordinarily make good sense. If we've broken into his communications we'd like to glean as much as we could from it by keeping that fact secret. But in a game of cat and mouse there may be times when the cat may want to give up a little to get a lot more. The whole point is that the phrase may have been used MONTHS ago, and maybe he knows that the channel is already gone.
For example:
Man arrested for contacting Qaeda(In contact with the Al Qaeda leadership)
As the article says our guys have been "allowing news of the new push to leak into the media."
I caught the winking smiley . . . . I think we'll all be smiling when this all gets resolved!