And yet, if you read Al-Reuters, you get a story titled: Unmasking of Qaeda Mole a U.S. Security Blunder-Experts

Which of course blames Bush, NOT the New York Times, for blowing the cover of the "mole." Now, to be honest, this guy was not a "mole," because a mole is one of your own agents infiltrated into the enemy's camp. The captured Al Qaeda guy (hereafter MNNK) was NOT one of our guys. He was cooperating under duress, probably EXTREME duress, since the Pakistanis don't have silly things like Miranda Rights and squeamishness about torture. But it was only a matter of time until his buddies found out that he had been captured. MNNK had the shelf life of a loaf of bread. It seems likely that he would have taken the first opportunity to tip off his Al Qaeda contacts that he had been captured. I don't really see this as a big deal. We got the bad guy, we got his computer and all of the information it held, and we'll squeeze him like a lemon for as long as he's useful.

I don't know much about international high level terrorism, I do know about informants on a local level. Barcodeking is right, the shelf life of an informant is short.
Enterprises such as AlQ compartmentalise information, just as do successful criminal enterprises. When we turn one of their members we get information and act on it. Act on the first piece of info, the survivors wonder what happened, act on the second piece, they start thinking 'informant'. We act on the third piece they start putting together who had access, by the fourth piece they've pretty much figured it out. Then it's a race, act on what's left before the warnings arrive.
Once an informant is used up or blown, or suspected of being blown, there is one more thing the agencies can use him for, disruption. Announce that we have him as an informant and everyone that's ever dealt with him, even at second or third hand, has to use his escape plan. Whatever operations being planned are disrupted as every AlQ asshole dives in a hole and pulls it in after him.
I've seen it work on a local level, there's no reason it won't work on the international level.
Watch. There should be someone at high level vowing, with red face and bulging veins, to find the leaker. If nothing happens within a month or three, it was a planned leak. It's a show, rehearsed a thousand times. It always works because the bad guys have to take informants very seriously.
Just like, while playing defense, we have to be right every time, they only have to be right once, a show like this puts THEM on defense.

The thing is that for all we know he was useless when he was outed, vague protests from "security experts" notwithstanding. While it's hard to give the Times a pass, just maybe they were pawns in a bigger game we know nothing about.

You are right JT. But Rove could have had something to do with this one too.

You're absolutely right - this deserves more scrutiny.

Any bets that this was ALSO done by the Bush administration? Looks like they are to blame for both.

As much as I'd like to puch the Gray Lady while she wheezes on the ground I can't help bu think this is a non-story hyped up to make the weekend interesting. We have the laptops... game over. They (the bad guys) already know.

This is like putting out a two day old camp fire. Lots of smoke and a waste of water.