“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.

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 … “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 [made an arrest] announced during the Democratic National Convention … (Read all of Cole’s analysis.)