Check this out!
I picked this up from some London paper, not the NYT, but I think it says that the Pakistanis were the source.
Captured Qaeda engineer spurred attack warnings
By Douglas Jehl and David Rohde (The New York Times)
Monday, August 2, 2004
WASHINGTON: The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the CIA to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior U.S. officials.
The figure, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, was described by a Pakistani intelligence official as a 25-year-old computer engineer, arrested July 13, who had used and helped to operate a secret Qaeda communications system in which information was transferred via coded messages
A senior U.S. official would not confirm or deny that Khan had been the Qaeda figure whose capture led to the information. But the official said "documentary evidence" found after the capture had demonstrated in extraordinary detail that Qaeda members had for years conducted sophisticated and extensive reconnaissance of the financial institutions cited in the warnings on Sunday.
One senior U.S. intelligence official said the information was more detailed and precise than any he had seen during his 24-year career in intelligence work. A second senior U.S. official said it had provided a new window into the methods, content and distribution of Qaeda communications.
"This, for us, is a potential treasure-trove," said a third senior U.S. official, an intelligence expert, at a briefing for reporters on Sunday afternoon.
The documentary evidence, whose contents were reported urgently to Washington on Friday afternoon, immediately elevated the significance of other intelligence information gathered in recent weeks that had already been regarded as highly troubling, senior U.S. intelligence officials said. Much of that information had come from Qaeda detainees in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, as well as Pakistan, and some had also pointed to a possible attack on financial institutions, senior U.S. intelligence officials said.
The U.S. officials said the new evidence had been obtained only after the capture of the Qaeda figure. Among other things, they said, it demonstrated that Qaeda plotters had begun casing buildings in New York, Washington, and Newark, New Jersey, even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Among the questions the plotters sought to answer, senior U.S. intelligence officials said, were how best to gain access to the targeted buildings; how many people might be at the sites at different hours and on different days of the week; whether a hijacked oil tanker truck could serve as an effective weapon; and how large an explosive device might be required to bring the buildings down.
The U.S. officials would say only that the Qaeda figure whose capture had led to the discovery of the documentary evidence had been captured with the help of the CIA.
But an account provided by a Pakistani intelligence official made clear that the crucial capture in recent weeks had been that of Khan, who is also known as Abu Talha. The intelligence official provided information describing Khan as having assisted in evaluating potential U.S. and Western targets for terrorist attacks, and as being representative of a "new Al Qaeda."
The Brits have also been critical of us for releasing too much information about captured terrorists, and their associated equipment and documents. We all know that the Administration is in a tight spot: media scrutiny of every mistake, bogus claims that we're "losing" the WOT. But sometimes you have to measure the short term political gain of publicizing a big capture against the potential for future damage to our enemies if the information is withheld (and acted upon later). Are we going to kill the goose that could continue to lay "golden eggs" of intel down the road?
So at the urging of the U.S. to "get tough on the terrorists", the Paks arrested our guy - by pure luck, no doubt.
Then we had to tell them he was one of ours. No doubt in my mind that it was the Paks who called the NYT.