It's been more than a week since I pointed out how amply the major US media covered the August 2004 outing of an al-Qaeda insider that Pakistani intelligence had "flipped" into spying on the bad guys for our side. "Until U.S. officials leaked the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan to reporters, Pakistan had been using him in a sting operation to track down al-Qaeda operatives around the world," reported CNN at the time. The United States apologized for the leaks, which put a premature end to "a big MI5 and police surveillance operation in Britain."
After the bombing attacks on London's transit system last week, the blogosphere bristled with questions about whether there was any connection. Then ABC News reports on Friday that this al Qaeda plot was two years in the making. Juan Cole at Informed Comment notes:
The British had been preparing a set of indictments and pursuing the investigation, in part by using Khan. They were forced to move before they were ready. Some suspects escaped on hearing Naeem Noor Khan's in the media. Of those who were arrested, several had to be released for lack of evidence against them. Muhammad Sadique Khan, one of the July 7 bombers, was apparently connected to one of the suspects under surveillance in early August, 2004.
Sadique Khan had earlier eluded a large British counter-terrorism sweep, Operation Crevice, says Friday's Scotsman.
Cole also flagged a French news account (in English) from statements by Nicolas Sarkozy, French interior minister:
[A]mongst the five who escaped from the operation was Mohammad [Sadique] Khan, one of the alleged suicide bombers who struck on the London Underground. This Briton of Pakistani descent has been on the list of Scotland Yard's "targets" for the last 15 months, only with a different age and a different first name - Kayoun instead of Sidique, but "it's the same man" who gave the police the slip.
While the French newspaper Libération notes the denial from British Home Secretary Charles Clarke, The Scotsman reports "British officials yesterday publicly refused to confirm or deny the French report, but privately some admit that there is evidence that Khan had been in contact with one of the men arrested last year."
Not that I want to put on my tinfoil hat (it's so unbecoming), but why aren't the US media pursuing this: to confirm, refute, or at least ask questions? We already have one case of "senior administrative officials" unmasking an undeniably undercover CIA operations officer, but we don't have any idea of the extent of the damage to intel operations or to the lives and safety of real people. Well, with the Khan case, we have a body count, but not a clear idea of a connection.
There's more at Metafilter, DailyKos and AmericaBlog