- 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.
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- 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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- "Holy Grail" od 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.
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- "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?
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- "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?"
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- A source such as Khan - cooperating with the authorities
while staying in active contact with trusting al Qaeda agents - would be
among the most prized assets imaginable, he said.
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- "Running agents within a terrorist organization
is the Holy Grail of intelligence agencies. And to have it blown is a major
setback which negates months and years of work, which may be difficult
to recover."
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- Rolf Tophoven, head of the Institute for Terrorism
Research and Security Policy in Essen, Germany, said allowing Khan's name
to become public was "very unclever."
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- "If it is correct, then I would say its another
debacle of the American intelligence community. Maybe other serious sources
could have been detected or guys could have been captured in the future"
if Khan's identity had been protected, he said.
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- Britain, which has dealt with Irish bombing campaigns
for decades, has a policy of announcing security alerts only under narrow
circumstances, when authorities have specific advice they can give the
public to take action that will make them safer.
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- Unnecessary Alarm
- Home Secretary David Blunkett, responsible for Britain's
anti-terrorism policy, said in a statement on Friday there was "a
difference between alerting the public to a specific threat and alarming
people unnecessarily by passing on information indiscriminately."
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- Kevin Rosser, security expert at the London-based
consultancy Control Risks Group, said an inherent risk in public alerts
is that secret sources will be compromised.
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- "When these public announcements are made they
have to be supported with some evidence, and in addition to creating public
anxiety and fatigue you can risk revealing sources and methods of sensitive
operations," he said.
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- In the case of last week's U.S. alerts, officials
said they had ordered tighter security on a number of financial sites in
New York, Washington and New Jersey because Khan possessed reports showing
al Qaeda agents had studied the buildings.
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- Although the casing reports were mostly several years
old, U.S. officials said they acted urgently because of separate intelligence
suggesting an increased likelihood of attacks in the runup to the presidential
election in November.
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- U.S. officials now say Hindi, one of the suspects
arrested after Khan's name was compromised, may have been the head of the
team that cased those buildings.
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- But the Pakistani disclosure that Khan was under
cover suggests that the cell had been infiltrated, and was under surveillance
at the time Washington ordered the orange alert.
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- The security experts said that under such circumstances
it would be extraordinary to issue a public warning, because of the risk
of tipping off the cell that it had been compromised.
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