Wht the @#$% is going on?

So, according to the latest news in the War on Terrorism, so called, "United States authorities" refuse to allow German courts to question prisoners held in U.S. prisons, because it might lead to "critical secret information being divulged." It is not even allowed to confirm-or-deny if a particular individual is even a prisoner. So much for Habeas Corpus.
On the other hand, the name of the man (Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, to wit) who was cooperating with the CIA by collecting information directly from al Quaeda (a terrorist organization, I believe) was given to the New York Times by the National Security Adviser of the United States!
Incredible!
Could the identity of this man, a (now former) focal point of al Quaeda intelligence, be a less valuable resource than people who have been in jail for the last two years?
One of the most frequently cited rules the U.S. government has for deciding what information shall be classified is: "No information shall be classified simply for the purpose of avoiding embarrassment on the part of the government, or of any individual."
If I were a member of this government, at this point in time I'd probably be frantic to prevent people from learning how badly I'd screwed up the entire episode of
Captured Enemy Combatants - a neologism that eerily reminds one of the fabulous Captured Enemy Documents of the Vietnam war.
A more maladroit war on terrorism would be difficult to imagine.