Stupidity Related Intelligence Program Activities

Oh those moments, the "Oh Shit", the "You can't be Serious", the "Holy Mother of God" moment. Due to outrage fatigue, cognitive dissonance, and astonishment overdose, we'll have to file this story in the "Why am I not suprised", category of moments. Apparently an attempt by the administration to cover its ass, resulted in the "outing" of an undercover pakistani operative, and may have caused British anti-terrorism operatives to move up a planned raid against terrorist suspects in England:

ISLAMABAD/LONDON (Reuters) - 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.

Probably working furiously trying to get some last minute work done because his jig was up. Stupid. Isn't this exactly the type of intelligence we need? Did I wake up this morning in Coveryerassistan

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.

We find out the day or two after this latest Security alert, that it was based on information pre-dating 9/11, so in response they inadvertantly 'out' an agent working with us. If I was an operastive, I would think twice before working with this crew. Meanwhile across the atlantic:

A U.S. official said on Friday one of 12 suspects caught in raids in Britain this week was a senior al Qaeda figure, and Washington would try to extradite him.

But British police said they had been forced to carry out their swoop more hastily than planned -- a day after Khan's name appeared in the New York Times as the source of information behind the U.S. alerts.

On Monday evening, after Khan's name appeared, Pakistani officials moved him to a secret location.

The next day British police mounted the sweep that caught the 12 suspects. Such raids are normally carried out late at night or in the early morning, when suspects might be at home and less likely to resist.

But showing clear signs of haste, British police pounced in daylight. Some suspects were taken in shops; others were caught in a high-speed car chase.

Being the nice chaps that they are the Brits are stopping short of blaming the idiots in the bush administration. Here are what some in the intelligence community are saying.

"If it's true that the Americans have unintentionally revealed the identity of another nation's intelligence agent, who appears to be working in the good of all of us, that is not only a fundamental intelligence flaw its also a monumental foreign relations blunder," security expert Paul Beaver, a former publisher of Jane's Defense Weekly, told Reuters.

Kevin Rosser, security expert at the London-based consultancy Control Risks Group, said such a disclosure was a risk that came with staging public alerts, but that authorities were meant to take special care not to ruin ongoing operations.

"When these public announcements are made they have to be supported with some evidence, and in addition to creating public anxiety and fatigue you can risk revealing sources and methods of sensitive operations," he said.

Exactly. Can we get some grown ups back in charge. Please, for the love of god and everything Holy.