It Must Be Habit Forming

Some people might consider this to be a serious breach of national security, but since nobody will get to say the words, “in his pants” or “in his socks” 7,432 times an hour it’s not likely to be much of a story. Besides, he’s an al Qaeda double agent which means that Republicans got all confused thinking he was a Democrat. You can’t blame them for that.

U.S. officials providing justification for anti-terrorism alerts revealed details about a Pakistani secret agent, and confirmed his name while he was working under cover in a sting operation, Pakistani sources said on Friday.

A Pakistani intelligence source told Reuters Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested in Lahore secretly last month, had been actively cooperating with intelligence agents to help catch al Qaeda operatives 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.”

“He was cooperating with interrogators on Sunday and Monday and sent e-mails on both days,” the source said.

The New York Times published a story on Monday saying U.S. officials had disclosed that a man arrested secretly in Pakistan was the source of the bulk of information leading to the security alerts.

The newspaper named him as Khan, although it did not say how it had learned his name. U.S. officials subsequently confirmed the name to other news organizations on Monday morning. None of the reports mentioned that Khan was working under cover at the time, helping to catch al Qaeda suspects.

Hey, the polls are tanking, it was obvious by Monday morning that Ridge was pumping up the volume for politcal reasons, so you can’t blame the administration for blowing the cover of an active al Qaeda double agent. If that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. They have an election to win, people.