And once again someone leaked the investigation and while some downplay the leak since the plot was already busted, the investigation wasn't finished. Further, as officials point out, the leak hurts our intelligence relationships with other countries.
It's interesting the BBC fail to point this out in their report. Instead the BBC gives us this:
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said this was one instance "where intelligence was on top of its game and discovered the plot when it was just in the talking phase".
What the BBC doesn't tell you is that Schumer is a vocal critic of the administrations efforts to perform just such surveillance activities that led to the elimination of this threat.
UPDATE
The Globe and Mail reports a Canadian was involved in the plot as well as more leaks. Sheesh.
It was not clear Friday where the Canadian suspect now being held in an undisclosed foreign country fit into the picture.More leaking to the Times and by the Times.
The alleged leader of the plot, Lebanese native Assem Hammoud, may have lived in Montreal at one point.
In footage aired by CBC, his mother said he had visited there with a Canadian girlfriend. And sources told CTV that a Montreal man suspected of involvement in the plan was detained in Lebanon on April 6 and interrogated by the FBI.
One counterterrorism expert who had been briefed on the plan, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the news media, told the New York Times: “These are bad guys in Canada and a bad guy in Lebanon talking, but it never advanced beyond that.”
You may recall Ahmed Ressam, who attempted to blow up LAX airport in 1999, was based in Canada.
Why do people contine to leak classifed information about intelligence operations? Because the administration isn't going after them. It's time to start prosecuting these people.
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