[Mb-civic] Unmasking of Qaeda Mole a U.S. Security Blunder-Experts

[Michael Butler]

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    Unmasking of Qaeda Mole a U.S. Security Blunder-Experts
    By Peter Graff 
    Reuters

     Saturday 07 August 2004

     London - 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" 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.

     "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?"

     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.

     "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."

     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."

     "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.

     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.

     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."

     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.

     "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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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.

     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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