Khan part III

It seems to me the Reuters is qualifiying their earlier claim that a Bush administration official (on background) was the very first mention of Khan's name to a journalist.

"It is not clear who originally disclosed Khan's name, which first appeared in The New York Times last Monday and was then confirmed by U.S. officials."

It is possible that Rice's concession "On background." to Blitzer referred to the confirmation.

In any case, the Bush administration appears to, at least, share the blame. The allegation that the Bush administration requested the announcement of the capture of a high value target during the democratic convention would tend to be confirmed by the announcement on July 29 of the capture of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani . The capture of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was part of the same breakthrough as the capture of Khan so revealing it made it harder to keep the capture of Khan secret. Worse the extensive discussion of al "Qaeda documents maybe on paper maybe electronic" which were, in fact, Khan's hard disk, and the orange alert itself all made it very difficult to keep Khan's capture a secret. Even if the leak came from a Pakistani intelligence official, this official may have assumed that, given the behavior of the Bush administration, the secret was doomed anyway.

Senator Schumer is doing an excellent job of focusing attention on these important issues without claiming to know things he doesn't know.