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LISA MULLINS: The long arm of the law has lost out to the long lens of the media in Britain. The UK's top counter-terrorism officer has resigned after exposing top-secret information about a police operation. Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick accidentally displayed the document to press photographers. The World's Laura Lynch reports from London.

LAURA LYNCH: The senior cop in charge of battling terrorism, charged with heading up some of the force's most sensitive and secret operations. And yet, no briefcase, not even a folder hid the document Bob Quick carried into 10 Downing Street yesterday afternoon. Headlined “Briefing Note – Operation Pathway” and marked “Secret”, it described an investigation into a suspected Al Qaeda driven attack planning within the UK. With the information suddenly public, police in the northwest England had to scramble yesterday afternoon to make arrests. Opposition Conservative MP Crispin Blunt says Quick had no choice but to quit.

BLUNT: It was a disaster. We've got to remember this very serious operation. It was triggered at a timing not of the police's choosing because of the actions of the senior directing officer of counter-terrorism in the United Kingdom. That was very serious, and I can imagine that the counter-terrorist squad in the northwest would be spitting tacks all the way across the region at the consequences for their operation.

LYNCH: It certainly wasn't the way police had planned to carry out the arrests. They prefer raiding homes in the middle of the night, when it's quiet. But this time, officers flooded into public areas in broad daylight, searching for suspects – putting lives at risk and frightening some onlookers. Police and the government are now trying to shift the focus onto the substance of the investigation. They say that the 12 men arrested were in the final stages of planning an attack, though police are releasing few details. At least 10 of the suspects are from Pakistan, in Britain on student visas. Before any charges have even been laid, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is suggesting it was a plot planned overseas.

BROWN: I will be talking to the Pakistan President, Mr. Asif Zardari. We want the closest cooperation between Britain and Pakistan to deal with countering terrorism – and I think one of the lessons we're learning from the events of the last few years is that Pakistan has got to do more to root out the terrorist elements in its country as well.

LYNCH: Those remarks aren't likely to go down well in Pakistan, nor among some British Muslims. They remember all too well a dramatic raid in southeast London almost three years ago. One man was shot; in the end, no one was convicted. But those who study terrorism in Britain say there is still cause for concern. Anthony Glees is the director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham. He says Britain has been far too lax in tracking the more than 300,000 foreign students living in the country. Glees wants all schools to be forced to hand the names of all of them to the government.

GLEES: This is particularly important, if I may say so, because as M15 and the police are showing considerable success in disrupting plots anchored in the United Kingdom, it increases the incentive of Al Qaeda and others to target the United Kingdom from without – and overseas students are clearly a vital way of doing that.

LYNCH: Of course, this investigation is far from complete. Police are just beginning to gather physical evidence. And while officers claim there was a plot to hurt and kill, they couldn't or wouldn't list any specific targets or even suggest when the attack would have been carried out. For The World, I'm Laura Lynch, in London.

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