Bush Intelligence -- Ultimate Oxymoron

The Bush Administration, in its hysteria to justify the latest hysterical & unnecessary terror alert, named a confidential source who had INFILTRATED AL QAEDA. Just another unimportant secret government agent, like Valerie Plame, who was unimportant to the CIA -- her specialty was only WMD, right? Could these jamokes be any more incompetent?

LINK THE MOLE; TECH GENIUS OUTED FIENDS (from our friends, the ultra-liberal New York Post):

August 7, 2004 -- The Pakistani computer expert at the heart of al Qaeda's communications network has been cooperating with an anti-terror sting operation, it was disclosed yesterday.
But the revealing of Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan's name by U.S. officials may have jeopardized the effort to track down al Qaeda members through their e-mail exchanges with him, Pakistani officials said.

LINK Unmasking of Qaeda Mole a U.S. Security Blunder-Experts (from Reuters)


By Peter Graff

LONDON (Reuters) - The revelation that a mole within al Qaeda was exposed after Washington launched its "orange alert" this month has shocked security experts, who say the outing of the source may have set back the war on terror.

Reuters learned from Pakistani intelligence sources on Friday that computer expert Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, arrested secretly in July, was working under cover to help the authorities track down al Qaeda militants in Britain and the United States when his name appeared in U.S. newspapers.

"After his capture 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."

Last Sunday, U.S. officials told reporters that someone held secretly by Pakistan was the source of the bulk of the information justifying the alert. The New York Times obtained Khan's name independently, and U.S. officials confirmed it when it appeared in the paper the next morning.

None of those reports mentioned at the time that Khan had been under cover helping the authorities catch al Qaeda suspects, and that his value in that regard was destroyed by making his name public.

A day later, Britain hastily rounded up terrorism suspects, some of whom are believed to have been in contact with Khan while he was under cover. Washington has portrayed those arrests as a major success, saying one of the suspects, named Abu Musa al-Hindi or Abu Eissa al-Hindi, was a senior al Qaeda figure.

But British police have acknowledged the raids were carried out in a rush. Suspects were dragged out of shops in daylight and caught in a high speed car chase, instead of the usual procedure of catching them at home in the early morning while they can offer less resistance.

"HOLY GRAIL" OF INTELLIGENCE
Security experts contacted by Reuters said they were shocked by the revelations that the source whose information led to the alert was identified within days, and that U.S. officials had confirmed his name.

"The whole thing smacks of either incompetence or worse," said Tim Ripley, a security expert who writes for Jane's Defense publications. "You have to ask: what are they doing compromising a deep mole within al Qaeda, when it's so difficult to get these guys in there in the first place? "It goes against all the rules of counter-espionage, counter-terrorism, running agents and so forth. It's not exactly cloak and dagger undercover work if it's on the front pages every time there's a development, is it?"

OK, people, it's time to send the amateurs packing and bring in the professionals. Kerry in a landslide, anyone?