The Third Man? Or Just The Stranger?
The London Times, fresh from exposing the Downing Street Iraq memo, is now casting doubt on Washington's claim that the recently captured Abu Faraj al-Libbi was the number-three man in Al Qaeda:
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.
Another Libyan is on the FBI list -- Anas al-Liby, who is wanted over the 1998 East African embassy bombings -- and some believe the Americans may have initially confused the two. When The Sunday Times contacted a senior FBI counter-terrorism official for information about the importance of the detained man, he sent material on al-Liby, the wrong man.
[Via Clark Stooksbury.]
