I'm not sure on Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan

I'm not an expert on Al Qaeda figure Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan who was just "released" by Pakistan, but my memory falls back to the circumstances of his arrest.

It was right after the terror warnings on financial institutions before the 2004 Democratic convention, and the Bush administration leaked his name to the NYTimes on background to defend their seemingly political use of terror. If you'll remember, this was the leaked name that controversially forced the Pakistanis and British to arrest a bunch of people before they were ready.

But the reason I'm even mentioning Khan is the still open case as to how much information he was providing when he was burned for political reasons. (CNN from 2004)

The effort by U.S. officials to justify raising the terror alert level last week may have shut down an important source of information that has already led to a series of al Qaeda arrests, Pakistani intelligence sources have said.

Until U.S. officials leaked the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan to reporters, Pakistan had been using him in a sting operation to track down al Qaeda operatives around the world, the sources said.

I don't really know what I'm getting at here, but I'm amazed that this part of the history is being left out of the stories on his release.