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Glenn, in stating that the FBI must be leaking their best case, is assuming that he understands the motives of the FBI in this case, which he may, or he may not.
Those who have read at Humanity Against Crimes know that I spent a fair amount of time on the timeline for torture, and on the motives for it, as well. Generally there are a small set of motives for torture, they are laid out in detail in the CAT.
But now Jane Mayer comes out with a new motive that precipitated the first documented torture of a high-value detainee, the extraordinary rendition of Ibn al Shaykh al Libi to Egypt, which occurred around the middle of October, 2001 (it was definitely before October 26th, as pesky details started surfacing in Pakistan that day).
Turns out that the FBI interrogation of al Libi was going very, very well, and producing actionable intelligence, and to the point of turning al Libi with deals about asylum for his wife and kids and so forth.
While the CIA jealousy over this state of affairs is mentioned, the real reason he was taken to Egypt and tortured was to prevent standard law enforcement techniques (up to and including reading him his Miranda rights) from registering a success, thereby helping those that thought that al Qaeda should be dealt with as a criminal affair. The motive for the torture was not any of the standard ones, not confession, not prejudice, not creating terror among the masses, and certainly not to get information. It was to prevent a law enforcement success that would have prevented the War on Terror and the subversion of the rule of law, by questioning the most fundamental premise of the Bush administration: That war was a better response to terrorism than law enforcement and the dark side was a more effective means of fighting than the honorable or legal methods.
I'm mentioning this because I already expressed my misgivings for swallowing Scott Shane's article on the last thread, and because I question whether anyone can truly say what game the FBI is playing and whether or not there has been any incompetence at all in what they are doing right now.
Personally, I believe they are running a counterterrorism scenario, together with a lot of psyops, could give a hoot about how badly it botches their criminal investigation, and might even be welcoming the reactions to their leaks. Nobody but a few doctors bleating ineffectually in the Letters column of the NYT is talking about the sheer size of the bioterrorism program that has been put together, or questioning how much of a threat bioterrorism really is. They have notoriously untalkative lab researchers spilling their emotions and unqualified judgments to the press. They have confirmed the use of a ton of pornography surveillance as a weapon to discredit someone, and have a gauge as to how well it works. Only a few friends are criticizing the interrogation tactics of the FBI against a man's family, they have successfully created a drumbeat for violating all of the standard privacy protections to suicide victim's families because the public is demanding information, perhaps exactly as desired. Everybody wants to know more, whether they are entitled to or not. So much for FISA debates and civil liberties, the public is willing to sanction delving into every member of the therapy group's private medical lives to find out what Bruce Ivins said in their presence. Everyone is focusing on the facts of the case, no one cares anymore about why the FBI acted this way. And they get to close the investigation before a new administration arrives to question their motives.
When something is too incompetent to be believed, sometimes it isn't. Brownie and Rove ran the Katrina recovery. Louisiana has a Republican governor. Incompetence?
