By now you have seen this story:
The laptop computer of Naeem Noor Khan, a captured al Qaeda leader, contained plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway system, as well as on financial buildings in both New York and Washington.
“There’s absolutely no doubt he was part of an al Qaeda operation aimed at not only the United States but Great Britain,” explained Alexis Debat, a former official in the French Defense Ministry who is now a senior terrorism consultant for ABC News.
As noted earlier, the lefty bloggers have been all over this, as it was initially believed this is the fellow whose arrest had to be rushed because American sources may have outed his cover:
This is yet another case of this administration abusing intelligence assets for political gain. Fits right in with Rove/Plame and Iraq/WMD. Heck, a lack of understanding of intelligence led to 9/11 in the first place.
That may not be the case, and a Democrat (if that matters) who chooses to remain anonymous (ahh- the beloved anonymous source!) has emailed me the following:
It seems that the British raid, prompted by the Bush administration leak of the name of an Al-Qaeda mole, was not the same raid in which Sadique Khan, one of the London terror suspects, escaped.
According to the French newspaper, Liberation, Sadique Khan escaped from a British raid conducted in March 2004:
According to the French intelligence services, the London suicide bombers belonged to the same network as the Britons of Pakistani origin who were partially arrested in Great Britain in March 2004. So Nicholas Sarkozy, French interior minister explained yesterday in Bruxelles at the EU council meeting. “It seems that part of that team were arrested in spring 2004…” The bombers, according to the french minister, weren’t amongst those arrested at the time.
Out of “the 13 presumed terrorists identified by the British only 8 were arrested and 5 escaped. The arrests were part of an operation which recovered 600kg of explosives,” said the senior French police officer, who yesterday revealed to Lib
Jeff
Any word on where Chaka Khan fits into all this?
ppgaz
Sounds like the Blog-o-spin is catching up to the government spin level.
The government is a good teacher.
As Krugman said yesterday, in this environment, there is no truth but political truth.
Up becomes down, when it’s useful to say so.
SoCalJustice
I’m loathe to tell MI5 how to do their job, but I think a call to Shatner is clearly in order.
Mike S
It’s possible that Khan survived the Genesis Project’s explosion, was hurtled back in time by the force of the blast and is currently attemping set the timeline so that his group can succeed in taking over the world in the future.
Defense Guy
Of course no discussion of Khan is complete without this:
http://princesskhan.ytmnd.com/
Speakers required.
neil
I cannot believe that the Bush administration allowed Genghis Khan to escape. The blood of tens of thousands of the Mongols’ victims is on Bush’s hands.
Mike S
And, true to form, the Star Trek references and Chakha Khan jokes begin in earnest.
That’s why I always say that we agree on more than we disagree. How can an evil man named Khan come up without refs to Star Trek?
Mason
Khaaaan!
Clever
Another Khan
Mr Furious
Between this and Billmon’s Evil Spock column, fans of the one, true Star Trek have been vindicated before the eyes of the Next Generation upstarts…
Tim F
If AQ Khan isn’t involved somehow I’ll eat this cookies-and-cream ice cream cake.
Steve
I’m not sure why it really matters. It’s clear that the premature compromising of Khan cost us a lot of intelligence and a lot of potential captures of al-Qaeda members. If the administration is really responsible for that compromising – and the chain of causation is pretty complicated, don’t get me wrong – that’s a Very Bad Thing, irrespective of whether you can directly draw a line to the London bombing. Letting terrorists get away isn’t subject to the “no harm, no foul” doctrine.
JG
Its not that a leak happened, it’s why it happened thats unacceptable.