On this whole Associated Press thing, it’s good to put things in some context. Why was the AP so hellbent on publishing that we had disrupted a new al-Qaeda plot to blow up airliners with underwear bombs? The answer is clear from the article. They thought it was newsworthy that there had been a plot when when the Department of Homeland Security and the White House press secretary had both recently said that they were unaware of any plots. In fact, this discrepancy may have been what caused the leaker to leak.
Now, I am willing to stipulate that it is newsworthy whenever the White House or its cabinet members are caught saying something untrue. But once the AP contacted the White House and learned that there was an ongoing operation and the threat had always been contained, they should have questioned the motives of the leaker and they also should have stopped seeing the story as newsworthy. Did they really think it was possible for the administration to acknowledge a plot at the time they were asked about possible plots?
Consider this:
Sources later told CNN that the operative who was supposed to have carried the bomb had been inserted into al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate by Saudi intelligence, and that the device had been handed over to U.S. analysts. One source said Saudi counterterrorism officials were upset that details of the operation had emerged in the United States because they had a network of agents inside the Yemeni branch who could have been compromised by leaks from Washington.
And this from The Guardian:
The [British] agent was recruited by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which operates in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and asked to carry a bomb aboard a US-bound plane.
The revelation is politically and legally awkward for MI6 and MI5 whose agents, unlike American ones, are banned from missions that lead to assassinations, such as the US drone attack at the weekend that killed the top al-Qaida operative in the Yemen, Fahd al-Quso. The attack is being attributed to information from the agent.
In fact, the original AP article was published the day after Fahd al-Quso met his maker. So, what kind of gotcha journalism is it to make believe that the administration was misleading the public for political advantage, rather than to protect a sensitive operation and our relations with Saudi and British intelligence?
My best guess is that we (or the Saudis) had to remove a bunch of agents-in-place who were giving intelligence on AQAP and trying to help us catch the bomb maker.
It’s not just that the AP reported the story, it’s how they reported it.
The operation unfolded even as the White House and Department of Homeland Security assured the American public that they knew of no al-Qaeda plots against the U.S. around the anniversary of bin Laden’s death. The operation was carried out over the past few weeks, officials said.
“We have no credible information that terrorist organizations, including al-Qaeda, are plotting attacks in the U.S. to coincide with the anniversary of bin Laden’s death,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said on April 26.
On May 1, the Department of Homeland Security said, “We have no indication of any specific, credible threats or plots against the U.S. tied to the one-year anniversary of bin Laden’s death.”
The anniversary of bin-Laden’s death is on May 2nd. The agent provided the CIA with the bomb on approximately April 20th. The threat was over by the time they were asked about it. The man left with the bomb almost two weeks before the anniversary. No matter how you look at it, the administration hadn’t done anything wrong.
But they did have a skunk inside the tent who was willing to create huge problems for political purposes in an election year. And they had the AP lapping it up and dishing it out.
