N.Y. Times Blows Cover of Key Counterterror Agent

By Steve Roeder
Talon News
August 9, 2004

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.

U.S. officials confirmed The Times report.

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.