May 17, 2012 | Quote
FBI Chief Says Leak on Qaeda Plot Is Being Investigated
WASHINGTON — The FBI director told a Congressional committee on Wednesday that the authorities were investigating how information about a thwarted plot by Al Qaeda to detonate a bomb on an airliner bound for the United States was leaked to the news media.
At a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the director, Robert S. Mueller III, said that the disclosure of the information about the plot, which was first reported by The Associated Press on May 7, compromised the United States’ operations against Al Qaeda.
Mr. Mueller said that such a leak threatens operations, “puts at risk the lives of sources, makes it much more difficult to recruit sources, and damages our relationships with our foreign partners.”
“Consequently, a leak like this is taken exceptionally seriously, and we will investigate thoroughly,” he added.
The investigation continues an unprecedented focus by the Obama administration on targeting the sources of unauthorized disclosures of classified information to the news media. The administration has prosecuted six such cases, compared with a total of three under all previous presidents.
The prosecutions have had strong bipartisan support from Congress but have been sharply criticized by press advocates as misguided crackdowns on whistle-blowers. On Wednesday, members of the Senate committee endorsed the idea of the investigation.
“Regardless of political consequences, I hope that you get to the bottom of it,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, the ranking member of the committee. “Our international partners have been wary of cooperating with us in the wake of the WikiLeaks affair, in which our ability to keep their confidence was severely damaged.”
The A.P. said it learned of the bomb plot two weeks ago but agreed not to publish an article about it in response to pleas from the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency because an intelligence operation tied to the plot was under way. After the operation was completed, The A.P. published an article about how the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen planned to deploy a suicide bomber with an underwear bomb to blow up a plane headed to the United States. It was later revealed that the underwear bomb was smuggled out of Yemen by a double agent working for Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Grassley asked Mr. Mueller about the impact of the leak on the United States’ ability to work with its allies. “My hope is that it’ll have minimal impact,” Mr. Mueller said. “And I know that there are — discussions are going on with our partners overseas to make certain that whatever impact there is is minimized and precautions are put into place so that, in the future, it does not happen again.”
Mr. Mueller’s statements came a week after members of Congress called on C.I.A. officials and other federal officials to investigate the source of the leak. At the time, Representative Peter T. King, a New York Republican who is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said that the leak was particularly troubling because the plot was “one of the most tightly held operations I’ve seen in my years in the House.”
In recent months, the United States has sharply increased the number of drone strikes carried out in Yemen against suspected militants by the C.I.A. and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command. At least 10 militants were reported killed in two airstrikes in southern Yemen on Tuesday, although it was not clear if they were carried out by Yemeni attack planes or American drones.
If confirmed as American attacks, that would bring the total number of United States strikes this month to six, and over all this year to 19, according to the Long War Journal, a Web site that monitors drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen. The United States conducted a total of 10 airstrikes in 2011, the Web site said.
In another sign of the Obama administration’s increasing focus on Yemen, President Obama issued an executive order on Wednesday giving the Treasury Department authority to freeze the United States-based assets of anyone who seeks to “undermine” the American-backed political transition in Yemen.
The order is unusual because unlike similar measures authorizing terrorist designations and sanctions, it does not include a list of names or organizations already determined to be in violation. Instead, administration officials said, it is designed to deter individuals who could threaten Yemen’s fragile security and political stability by undermining the transition agreement reached last November that paved the way for the departure of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the election in February of a new president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
“It is definitely meant today as a message to those who are trying to block a transition that we have this tool to use against them and that they should think again about the policies that they are pursuing,” the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said.