N.Y. Times Blows Cover of Key Counterterror Agent

ISLAMABAD (Talon News) -- Pakistani intelligence sources say that the al Qaeda operative named by The New York Times as the source of information which led to the heightened state of alert was working undercover. Naming the suspect, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, forced Pakistan to terminate its sting operation and hide the man in a secret location.

The Times identified Khan in published reports last Monday. It said that U.S. officials disclosed that a man arrested in Pakistan was the source of the bulk of intelligence that led to the decision by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to raise the national alert status to orange (high) last Sunday for New York City, Newark, New Jersey, and Washington.

Khan operated a sting to provide critical intelligence on al Qaeda's plans for future attacks on the West. But Khan's value and the intelligence gathered to-date was rendered useless when The Times story broke.

Although the alert status was heightened, U.S. officials claim that they have no evidence of an imminent attack. The Bush administration had faced questions that the heightened alert status was based on dated al Qaeda surveillance.

A Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters on Friday that Khan, a computer expert who was arrested in Lahore secretly in July, had been actively cooperating with intelligence agents to help catch al Qaeda operatives when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers.

Khan, described by U.S. intelligence as "a one-man al Qaeda communications hub," was using the Internet to contact and identify al Qaeda operatives throughout the world so they could be tracked and arrested by British and U.S. authorities.

"After his capture [in July], he admitted being an al Qaeda member and agreed to send e-mails to his contacts," a Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters. "He sent encoded e-mails and received encoded replies. He's a great hacker, and even the U.S. agents said he was a computer whiz."

The Times characterized Khan as "a kind of clearinghouse of al Qaeda communications" and "a vital source of information" on terrorist operations, yet chose to identify him by name.

Khan is believed to have connections with unidentified operatives who could be planning pre-election attacks in the U.S.

The officials said the communication from Khan, and his computer files, indicated that al Qaeda has surveillance intelligence on five U.S. financial institutions dating to before the 9/11 attacks.

Combined with separate streams of intelligence that suggested threats to the U.S., Ridge increased the high terror alert.

"Information from arrests in Pakistan, taken together with information gathered by the U.S. intelligence community, indicated that al Qaeda has cased financial targets in New York, New Jersey, and Washington, DC., and has recently updated their targeting information," President George W. Bush said in his weekly radio address.

In addition to ending the Pakistani sting, the premature disclosure of Khan's identity compromised a major British operation in which 12 suspects were arrested in daytime raids this week. British authorities quickly arrested al Qaeda suspects Khan had identified before they were able to go underground. U.S. officials told NBC News this week that one of the 12 British detainees, known as Abu Eisa al-Hindi, was a key al Qaeda operative in Britain.

"By exposing the only deep mole we've ever had within al Qaeda, it ruined the chance to capture dozens if not hundreds more," former Justice Department prosecutor John Loftus told Fox News on Saturday.

U.S. sources said Khan had intended to hack into both the Federal Bureau of Investigation's web site and a British official web site to destroy them.

Here's the Slimes original article (emphasis is mine). Reading between the lines, some here (including me) have speculated that the name was leaked to the Slimes by Pakistani intelligence:

August 2, 2004

INTELLIGENCE

Captured Qaeda Figure Led Way to Information Behind Warning

By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID ROHDE

ASHINGTON, Aug. 1 - The unannounced capture of a figure from Al Qaeda in Pakistan several weeks ago led the Central Intelligence Agency to the rich lode of information that prompted the terror alert on Sunday, according to senior American 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 where information was transferred via coded messages.

A senior United States official would not confirm or deny that Mr. 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 American 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 American 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 American 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 American 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 American intelligence officials said.

The American 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 the buildings in New York, Newark and Washington even before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Among the questions the plotters sought to answer, senior American 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 American 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 C.I.A. Though Pakistan announced the arrest last week of a Qaeda member, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of American embassies in East Africa, the American officials suggested that he had not been the source of the new threat information.

An account provided by a Pakistani intelligence official made clear that the crucial capture in recent weeks had been that of Mr. Khan, who is also known as Abu Talha. The intelligence official provided information describing Mr. Khan as having assisted in evaluating potential American and Western targets for terrorist attacks, and as being representative of a "new Al Qaeda."

The Pakistani official described Mr. Khan as a fluent English speaker who had told investigators that he had visited the United States, Britain, Germany and other countries. Mr. Khan was one of thousands of Pakistani militants who trained in Afghanistan under the Taliban in the 1990's, the Pakistani official said.

If indeed Mr. Khan was the man whose arrest led the C.I.A. to new evidence, his role as a kind of clearinghouse of Qaeda communications, as described by the Pakistani intelligence official, could have made him a vital source of information. Since his arrest, Mr. Khan has described an elaborate communications system that involves the use of high and low technology, the Pakistani official said.

The question of how much to rely on information obtained from captured foes has always weighed on the intelligence business. In recent weeks, even as they cited accounts from some captured Qaeda members as the basis for new concerns about terrorism, American intelligence officials have acknowledged that another captured Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, had recanted claims that Iraq had provided training in illicit weapons to Qaeda members.

Mr. Libi's earlier claims had been the primary basis for assertions by President Bush and his top advisers that Iraq had provided training in "poisons and gases" to Qaeda members.

In explaining the decision to call a new terror alert, American officials would say only that the evidence obtained by the C.I.A. after the arrest of the Qaeda figure in Pakistan had provided a richer, more credible source of intelligence than could have been provided by any single individual. They declined to say whether the "documentary evidence" included physical documents or might also include electronic information stored on computers, such as copies of e-mail communications.

The Qaeda communications system that Mr. Khan used and helped operate relied on Web sites and e-mail addresses in Turkey, Nigeria and the northwestern tribal areas of Pakistan, according to the information provided by a Pakistani intelligence official.

The official said Mr. Khan had told investigators that couriers carried handwritten messages or computer disks from senior Qaeda leaders hiding in isolated border areas to hard-line religious schools in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province.

Other couriers then ferried them to Mr. Khan on the other side of the country in the eastern city of Lahore, and the computer expert then posted the messages in code on Web sites or relayed them electronically, the Pakistani official said.

Mr. Khan had told investigators that most of Al Qaeda's communications were now done through the Internet, the official said. After a message was sent and read by the recipient, the entire communication and related files were deleted to maintain secrecy, he said. Mr. Khan had told investigators that e-mail addresses were generally not used more than a few times.

The young computer engineer, who received a bachelor's degree from a university in Karachi, is the unemployed son of an employee of Pakistan's state airline and a college botany professor, the official said. Heavily built and 6 feet 2 inches tall, he speaks English with a British accent, and was arrested carrying a fake Pakistani identification card.

The Pakistani official said Mr. Khan told investigators that he had received 25 days of training at a militant camp in Afghanistan in June 1998. By the time Mr. Khan had risen to his current position, the official said, Qaeda figures had arranged his marriage and were paying him $170 a month for rent for his house in Lahore and $90 for expenses.

Mr. Khan was in contact with the brother of the Indonesian Qaeda leader Hambali, who was studying in a religious school in Karachi, and who was recently deported. Mr. Khan has told interrogators that his Qaeda handler was a Pakistani he knew as Adil or Imran, who assigned him tasks related to computer work, Web design and managing the handler's messages. His correspondents included a Saudi-based Yemeni, Egyptian and Palestinian nationals and Arabs in unknown locations, and someone described as the "in-charge" in the city of Khost in eastern Afghanistan.

Asked about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mr. Khan has told interrogators that even the top Qaeda commanders do not know, the Pakistani intelligence official said.

Douglas Jehl reported from Washington for this article, and David Rohde from Karachi, Pakistan.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.