It sure doesn't look like it.
CNN's Steve Brusk tweets: "Law enforcement source says AbdulMutallah has been providing useful, current, and actionable intelligence. Leads being actively chased."
Heh. This is smoke and mirrors, pure and simple.
Let's take it at face value.
It's been a month since AbdulMutallah proved himself an inept murderer-by-suicide. Hell, he's not even as successful as Achmed the Dead Terrorist. Achmed at least got the suicide part down, and scored a good acting job as a follow on.
A month in which Attorney General Holder's Justice Department facilitated AbdulMutallah's silence by allowing him to lawyer-up, and not get interrogated by intel specialists with the knowledge and experience to ask the right questions and to understand what they were hearing.
Um, here's a thought straight from US military training - if you are captured and have actionable intelligence, delay and obfuscate as long as you can, knowing that people will be assessing the damage and reacting accordingly. Then, it's okay to start releasing what is now stale information rather than submit to having people nibble off your toes with heated horseshoe nail-benders.
Guess what? As soon as al Qaeda knew that the A-man was in custody, they were evaluating what they believed he knew, and acting on that - moving people and hard assets around, abandoning safe houses, changing timetables and dropping plans while devising new ones. They actually have a *lot* of experience at this. Decades of it, in fact. In environments where their enemies can be really pragmatic about intel-gathering, with little regards for comfort of the accused or the tender sensibilities of academics and trans-national elites.
One month later, the only people we're going to find are the stupid ones, and the plans we find are the plans they *want* us to find. If we get anything else, that will just be pure dumb luck on our part combined with poor tradecraft on their part. Emphasis on dumb. We'll be wasting assets and time chasing chimeras and things that go bump in the night - which is exactly what they want us to do as they re-set and re-posture themselves.
Well, that's what you do if you are serious about what you're doing, and not posturing for your peeps.
Which means - either the people involved in the leak are *breathtakingly stupid and naive* or this is an information operation aimed at the American people to show them how really cool the government actually is and this whole law enforcement approach really *is* the best way to do it.
Uh-huh. Either way, it's breathtakingly stupid. One is simply more venal than the other.
This failure is why "senior intelligence officials" basically prediced a serious AQ terror attack within 3-6 months:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6169565n
As Instapundit says, the country is in the very best of hands. [/end sarcasm]
Here's the thing that is cracking me up today: Another attempted terrorist attack on the US is "certain" within the next 3-6 months.
NO KIDDING. REALLY?????
In other news... snow and rain are likely to hit the country before the end of the year. No. Really. I'm serious. I'm certain of it.
And your analysis of AQ's actions after Abdul the Inept Terrorist's actions are 100% spot on: old plans have been modified or scrapped, based upon what he knew at the time. None of his personal knowledge is likely to have an impact on preventing any terrorist attacks at this point.
The only way this makes sense is if you start with the premise that they want the OTHER side to win.
So yes, I question their patriotism and their loyalty.
Spiff