Soccer Dad

Inside Out at the Sun

The Baltimore Sun of August 11, featured an angry editorial "And outside and In" blasting the Bush administration for leaking the name of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan

When Tom Ridge, the secretary of homeland security, went on television Aug. 1 and announced that the terror alert level was being raised in New York, Newark, N.J., and Washington, he stressed that the move was based on freshly obtained intelligence. That should have been enough. But someone in the administration evidently felt either that Americans were getting too skeptical of official warnings or that it was time for the White House to show how on-the-ball it is - or both. This unidentified person promptly leaked the information that the intelligence stemmed from the arrest in Pakistan of a man named Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, and that he had computer disks relating to al-Qaida's plans.

The leaker didn't know or didn't care that Mr. Khan had been turned following his arrest back in July and was at that moment working for Pakistani security agents against his former terrorist colleagues.

Pakistani officials say they believe they were finally on the verge of making real progress against al-Qaida - but the opportunity blew up in their faces after the news came out of Washington.

Ah yes, the Bush administration blew it big time.
Well yesterday's Sun editorial "With friends like these" had a somewhat more concilliatory tone:

LAST WEEK we reported that the government in Pakistan was furious that the identity of an arrested al-Qaida suspect had been leaked by someone in the Bush administration. The leak forced both the Pakistani and British governments to move in prematurely on other suspects and wrap up investigations earlier than they would have liked. It looked like someone in Washington had blundered badly, and we pointed that out.
But now come reports -- including one in The New York Times, which earlier had been the first newspaper to publish the identity of the arrested man -- suggesting that the leaker was a Pakistani official, not an American. (For what it's worth, the Pakistani government still blames the United States.) That would let the Bush administration off the hook -- but it speaks volumes about the difficult and murky circumstances surrounding the effort to hunt down al-Qaida.

"Now come reports?" Actually Mickey Kaus figured it out on August 10 - a day before the Sun's editorial - based on the New York Times article.
The Sun's blase response to its earlier ignorant editorial is telling for a few reasons:
1) Clearly the editors of the Sun don't keep up with blogs, else they would have been pretty certain that the leak of Khan's name did not come from the administration.
2) They will blame the Bush administration without all the evidence before them. (Conversely they will not say, "we should have known" they will just say, "new information has emerged.")
3) Instead of praising the Bush administration for getting the Musharaaf government to cooperate with the United States in the war on terror, yesterday's editorial largely focuses on the difficulty of maintaining that friendship.
4) Finally, nowhere does the Sun blame the NY Times for revealing Khan's name. Why not? When the Sun thought that the adminstration had leaked his name it was furious. Does the public's right to know outweigh the possibility of letting the bad guys know too soon?
Items 2 and 3 raise the question whether Sun is capable of putting aside partisan rancor and judging a situation on its merits. After all Kaus figured out the source of the leak from a careful reading of the Times article.
Item 4 just emphasizes the question about the Sun's ability to rise above partisanship. If a leak is a cause for outrage it is so whether it comes from a Republican administration or from a liberal newspaper.
Finally 1 shows how old fashioned the Sun's editors are. They didn't avail themselves of the latest tool for keeping informed. That is a failure they probably will never acknowledge. As a Kaus reader I knew the truth before they did. They could have saved themselves some embarrassment. (Well I know that they look foolish, even if they don't!)

Posted by SoccerDad at August 20, 2004 05:34 AM | TrackBack