Pakistani Officials Claim to Have Captured 'American al Qaeda'

By Elias Isquith

UPDATE: It appears that some of the skepticism regarding this story was well-founded; while an American al Qaeda operative has been captured, it's not Gadahn. There's a lot of confusion out there with this story, though, so we'll just have to see how this plays out in the next few days.

Pakistani Officials claim that they Adam Gadahn - née Adam Pearlman - the so-called "American al Qaeda" representative in their custody after arresting him yesterday in Karachi. American officials, meanwhile, have not confirmed or denied that such a capture has taken place. But the media is running with it as if they had.

Assuming the Pakistani officials are to be believed, the AP parses the meaning of this event rather succinctly:

The arrest of Gadahn is a major victory in the U.S.-led battle against al-Qaida and will be taken as a sign that Pakistan, criticized in the past for being an untrustworthy ally, is cooperating more fully with Washington.

Coming off the heels of Pakistan's recent capture of high-ranking Taliban commanders, this is indeed an encouraging sign that, far more than has been the case since the initiation of the "War on Terror" (which, technically, the US is no longer prosecuting), Pakistan is pulling its weight.

Interestingly - and not surprisingly - Gadahn was, in 2006, the first American in 50 years to be indicted for treason. But as you'd probably imagine, the story of how a partially Jewish kid from Oregon become a high-ranking member of al Qaeda is just all-around fascinating. Here's a great piece from the New Yorker which tells his story in greater detail.

It's a story that just got a whole lot more interesting.