Whoops, maybe -- Top Al-Quaeda guy isn't, or is he?

The Times reports:

THE capture of a supposed Al-Qaeda kingpin by Pakistani agents last week was hailed by President George W Bush as “a critical victory in the war on terror”. According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.

Al-Libbi’s arrest in Pakistan, announced last Wednesday, was described in the United States as “a major breakthrough” in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Bush called him a “top general” and “a major facilitator and chief planner for the Al- Qaeda network”. Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, said he was “a very important figure”. Yet the backslapping in Washington and Islamabad has astonished European terrorism experts, who point out that the Libyan was neither on the FBI’s most wanted list, nor on that of the State Department “rewards for justice” programme.

Read the whole thing here.

As I understand it, the identification of the guy came from the Pakistanis. The ID was broadcast quickly, probably because it was leaked from Pakistan. We've seen this before -- the Pakistanis release information of captures immediately, contrary to the interests of western intelligence agencies who want to hold the information so that they can follow up on the capture.

The response from the US was that this was the guy they wanted and that they had not put him on the most wanted lists because that would warn him that he was in peril. That sounds pretty lame to me -- a reflexive bureaucratic coverup of an embarrassing mistake; something that we have seen all too often in recent years. But it might be true -- who knows in the shadow world of intelligence media manipulation. In part the story might just be standard European glee at watching the stupid Americans make fools of themselves. I note that the story was sourced to European intelligence agencies that have in recent months taken hits from the Americans over bad WMD information. This could just be payback on their part. As I said, who knows? I don't, and I suspect none of the journalists or bloggers who are commenting on the situation know either.