Juan Cole on Rove / Khan

The Ghost of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog brings up the awful possibility, based on an ABC report, that the Public Relations-hungry Bush administration may have interfered with a British and Pakistani investigation of an al-Qaeda plot to bomb London that ties into July 7.

More after the jump...

The question is whether Bush played politics with terror around the time of the Democratic National Convention in late July, 2004. Jim Lobe reminded us at the time that ' The New Republic weekly quoted Pakistani intelligence officials as saying the White House had asked them to announce the arrest or killing of any "high-value [al-Qaeda] target" any time between July 26 and 28, the first three days of the Democratic Convention. At the time, former CIA officer Robert Baer said the announcement made "no sense." "To keep these guys off-balance, a lot of this stuff should be kept in secret. You get no benefit from announcing an arrest like this." '

In response to White House pressure, the Pakistanis were in fact able to make an arrest, which was announced during the Democratic National Convention. That arrest, of a Tanzanian named Ahmad Khalfan Gheilani, in turn led to the capture of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a young computer expert who had old al-Qaeda documents on his laptop as well as a more recent archive of email correspondence with al-Qaeda in the UK. Among the old data were pre-9/11 plans for attacks in New York and elsewhere.

read the entire piece at http://www.juancole.com/

•  How this is likely to play . . .

  If this horrific scenario is indeed true, then presumably the British authorities already know it.  The question then becomes whether Mr. Blair's government permits public disclosure of information which would confirm it, and one would have to think they would do their best to keep a lid on it.  Then will British reporters be enterprising enough, and will individuals at Scotland Yard have enough integrity, that the truth comes out?

  I cannot imagine anything more explosive than this. It would, I think, cause a near-revolution in the UK over Blair's poodlehood.  What will happen on the left side of the pond?  If the corporate media aren't interested in the lies that justified the war, will they be interested in a cheap political trick that killed more than 50 British civilians?  We shall see.

  by therealcervantes on Fri Jul 15, 2005 at 05:34:31 AM PDT