By Andy McCarthy:
As I explained in this post last evening, there seems to have been no good reason to file the arrest complaint against Faisal Shahzad publicly, and to have done so in a way that showed he was cooperating. All that does is alert co-conspirators that they’ve been compromised and should think about fleeing and destroying evidence.
It turns out that I didn’t know the half of it. This comes from an NPR report (and thanks to Greg McNeal for bringing it to my attention):
[snip]
Details about the Times Square investigation were all over the local newspapers, even as authorities were still trying to puzzle out who was responsible. Any element of surprise that law enforcement might have had was evaporating.
To be fair, law enforcement was partly to blame. In many cases, it was the source of the information and leaks. But there seemed to be an extra level of frustration about the leaks in this case. As one law enforcement official told NPR, “Our operational plans were being driven by the media, instead of the other way around. And that’s not good.”
