I don’t mean to belabor this point, but the source of the leak for Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan is important and there continues to be some uncertainty here.
The key piece of information in identifying who (and by “who,” I mean which country) was responsible for the leak came directly from National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, during an interview on CNN over the weekend. So the context is completely clear, here’s the relevant exchange in its entirety:
Blitzer: Let’s talk about some of the people who have been picked up, mostly in Pakistan, over the last few weeks. In mid-July, Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan. There is some suggestion that by releasing his identity here in the United States, you compromised a Pakistani intelligence sting operation, because he was effectively being used by the Pakistanis to try to find other al Qaeda operatives. Is that true?
Rice: Well, I don’t know what might have been going on in Pakistan. I will say this, that we did not, of course, publicly disclose his name. One of them…
Blitzer: He was disclosed in Washington on background.
Rice: On background. And the problem is that when you’re trying to strike a balance between giving enough information to the public so that they know that you’re dealing with a specific, credible, different kind of threat than you’ve dealt with in the past, you’re always weighing that against kind of operational considerations. We’ve tried to strike a balance. We think for the most part, we’ve struck a balance, but it’s indeed a very difficult balance to strike.
There aren’t a lot of ambiguities here. Khan’s name was leaked when it shouldn’t have been. Blitzer said his name was disclosed by an administration official “on background” and Rice agreed. There was some contradiction between Rice saying his name wasn’t “publicly disclosed” and her agreement that the information was released “on background,” but the fact that Bush administration officials were responsible for releasing the information seems pretty obvious.
Which makes Rice’s new spin on the ordeal all the more ridiculous.
Despite her comments on CNN, Rice’s office now insists she didn’t say what we heard her say.
Sean McCormack, a National Security Council spokesman, said yesterday that Rice did not say the leak came from American officials.
“[Rice] was in the middle of making a point and [Blitzer] interrupted her, and she reflexively repeated ‘on background,’ but she was not confirming it and went on to complete her thought,” McCormack said.
This really doesn’t pass the straight-face test.
The argument, effectively, is this: Rice, an educated scholar, one of the most powerful people in the Bush administration, and a central figure in informing the President of the United States about security threats around the globe, can be made to “reflexively repeat” false information on national television by Wolf Blitzer. His powerful, lie-inducing weapon? A mild interruption.
By this logic, Rice should be ordered never to do another television interview again — a journalist might interrupt her and who knows what kind of nonsense she’ll share with the world.
And, to be sure, this “on background” leak that Rice was somehow forced to acknowledge has been a disaster.
[Senior Pakistani officials] said Tuesday that some al-Qaida fugitives escaped after news reports revealed the arrest of a computer expert for Osama bin Laden’s network who was cooperating with investigators.
[…]
But on Tuesday, two senior officials expressed dismay that the arrest of Khan made it into the media too soon – reported first in American newspapers on Aug. 2 after it was disclosed to journalists by U.S. officials in Washington.
“Let me say that this intelligence leak jeopardized our plan and some al-Qaida suspects ran away,” one of the Pakistani officials said on condition of anonymity.
The final point I wanted to emphasize is that administration denials are going to reporters who know better, which is why the denials aren’t working. Rice is trying to disown her own words while Tom Ridge says he doesn’t know if the U.S. is responsible or not, but the reporters are clearly answering the question for us.
Wolf Blitzer said administration officials told the media about Khan because and he stated it as fact because he knows it’s true — his network, CNN, was briefed by administration officials. The AP said the leak reached journalists by way of “U.S. officials in Washington,” because the AP received the leak and knows the leakers.
So, where’s the outrage? I still don’t know why this story isn’t getting blanket coverage all over the news.