“On 8 August, 2004, Charles Schumer, Democratic senator for New York, sent two letters. The first was to Frances Fragos Townsend, George Bush's domestic security adviser; the second was to Condoleezza Rice, then National Security adviser to the President.

The letters were identical. 'Last Sunday,' the letters began, 'one or more senior American officials leaked details of the capture of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, the 25-year-old al-Qaeda computer engineer, to the news media. Mr Khan had been providing invaluable information to our allies, because he continued to maintain contact with al-Qaeda operatives even after his capture by our allies. According to several media reports, British and Pakistani intelligence officials are furious that the administration unmasked Khan and named other captured terrorist suspects.' ...

...Khan's seizure was a breakthrough for British intelligence. On Khan's computer were files carrying detailed surveillance of several financial buildings in New York, New Jersey and Washington. The details were so alarming that on 26 July the US authorities decided to increase their country's terrorism threat level to orange, the second highest level.

But Khan's real importance lay in the fact that, following his arrest, he co-operated with Pakistani intelligence, continuing his email contact with a cadre of al-Qaeda operatives which included a 34-year-old former airline ticket salesman living in Britain: Dhiren Barot...

...The Observer has been told by a senior anti-terrorism source that the Khan leak forced MI5 to swoop on Barot - and others - far earlier than it had wanted. On 3 August, the day after Khan's name had entered the media domain and six days after they had temporarily lost trace of him, police arrested Barot as he was having a haircut at the Golden Touch barbers in Willesden, north-west London...

...Worse, it is likely that they were forced to take action against suspects before they had joined all the dots. These include the links between Barot, several other suspects MI5 had under surveillance at the time, and Mohammed Siddique Khan, the leader of the four-man terror cell behind the 7/7 bombings in London, which for legal reasons this paper is unable to disclose in detail.

These links raise a troubling question: if the intelligence services had been able to monitor Barot and others for longer, would their chances of unearthing the 7/7 plot have increased?”

Finally, the press is starting to look deeper into the case of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan!

We must urge the new Congress to do likewise!

Please click here and sign the petition for a full investigation.

 http://petitiononline.com/noorkhan/petition.html

Also, I’d like to ask all my readers in the States and abroad to print out the Guardian article and the text of the Petition, and send both to Senator Schumer. Those of us in the United States can also send the same to our House Representatives.

Senator Schumer’s address is as follows:

Hon. Charles E. Schumer
United States Senate
313 Hart Senate Building
Washington, DC 20510

 http://gaelicstarover.blogspot.com/2006/11/barbershop-breakthrough.html

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