David Corn has a piece today about a Pakistani businessman who owns several pharmacies in New York City and has been fingered by a Guantanamo detainee as a “possible al-Qaida anthrax operative.” So is he? Nobody knows. Maybe the Gitmo detainee was just making stuff up. Maybe it’s already been exhaustively investigated and the guy has been cleared. Or maybe he really did have al-Qaeda ties at one time. The Pakistani guy can’t be reached, and there’s no evidence one way or the other about this aside from the detainee report, so it’s impossible to say.
Normally, I’d say that even running a story this thin would be criminally irresponsible. But here’s the thing: the guy’s name and the accusations against him were part of the WikiLeaks release of Guantanamo documents a few weeks ago, so it’s all publicly available now. Here’s David:
Mother Jones contacted the FBI in Washington and New York and asked for information regarding this suspect. After all, wouldn’t the bureau have thoroughly run down such a lead? Each office said that the FBI would not comment on information in a leaked document.
….With the document now in the open—and on the Internet—the public has a right to know whether this potentially dangerous matter has been resolved. (And, if turns out the intel is faulty, the Pakistani businessman deserves to have his name cleared.) The FBI has the usual bureaucratic reasons for not commenting; it does not want to legitimize leaks. But alarming information of this sort does warrant a response. The critical issue is not the leak, but the nightmarish possibility of an anthrax operative on the loose.
So how about it? Is this now a legitimate story, even though the charges are eight years old and have almost certainly been thoroughly investigated by now? Under the circumstances, should the FBI be willing to comment? Should we have run this story in the first place? What would be your call if you were running things here at MoJo?
