Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan Was a Double Agent
So it seems that Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan was a agent of the US for a short while before he was revealed as the source for the recent terror alerts and arrests.
I first saw this on Reason magazine's blog and it lead me to a particular anti-Bush history professor Juan Cole. Prof. Cole's theory that Bush had to out this valuable source in order to have a credible reason for the terror alert.
However, the question is, "Did we lose a valuable source of information."
A frequent refrain in the 9/11 Commission Report is the lack of human intelligence from within Al Quaeda. It does seem unlikely that we would willingly burn a source by releasing his name and location to the press without a very good reason. Sure, I'd like to know more about why things happen, but I don't want to lose the source of information.
The anti-war zealotry has led us to need to defuse "Wag the Dog" claims on terror alerts, and is thus lowering our ability to maintain long-term human intelligence within terrorist organizations. This is the legacy of Howard Dean.
In fact, it didn't prevent Dean from making the claim anyway.
But it may have prevented Kerry, who sometimes misses briefings.
Josh Poulson
Posted Saturday, Aug 7 2004 08:06 AM