By Randall Mikkelsen 23 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Tuesday denied leaking an Osama bin Laden video obtained by a private terrorism monitoring group which said the leak had exposed its surveillance methods and potentially closed a window on al Qaeda.
Private monitoring firm SITE Institute said in a Washington Post article that its years-long efforts to monitor al Qaeda communications had been set back after government agencies prematurely leaked to the media a pre-release video of bin Laden last month.
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The White House denied it had leaked the video but said the issue was a cause for concern and an investigation would be needed to determine what happened. The office of the Director of National Intelligence said U.S. intelligence agencies were not involved.
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The article cited Katz as saying al Qaeda supporters, alerted by the leak, then put up new obstacles that blocked SITE from accessing their secret network.
White House Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend told reporters the U.S. government needs help from private firms and individuals to fight terrorism. "So any time an individual or a commercial entity cooperates with us, and asks to be protected and doesn't get the protection that they either sought or deserved, that's a cause for concern," she said.
Back at the time this happened -- Sept. 7, 2007, a date that should live in infamy --
this struck us as quite odd indeed. There were rumblings in the news that Osama bin Laden had made his first videotape in three years, to mark the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Then transcripts and even clips of the video began leaking out to outlets like ABC News, and they seemed to be coming from the U.S. government, which felt strange. Didn't these videos normally air first on Arab outlets like al-Jazeera?
A month later, the story is exploding this morning: The early government leak of the bin Laden video led al-Qaeda's technicians to shut down its entire Internet operation, and thus eliminate the best spying window that we once had into the terror network that killed nearly 3,000 Americans in 2001.
From the Washington Post:
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The question, then, is this: Why would the Bush administration -- which has
set new low standards for secrecy on so many other matters where the public has a right to know -- be so eager to get this new bin Laden video out into the public domain? Well, in the big picture -- crazy as it sounds, given his 2001 pledge to catch bin Laden "dead or alive" -- rare public appearances by the al-Qaeda leader have tended to boost Bush here at home. Many think that bin Laden's prior video -- released just three days before the 2004 presidential election -- gave Bush the victory over John Kerry by reminding voters of the terror issue.
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This is so wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to begin. As has been well-documented over the last couple months,
Bush has shamelessly tried to seed confusion over the role of a newer group called al-Qaeda in Iraq -- with no direct link to bin Laden, which didn't exist in 2003 and would not have if the U.S. hadn't invaded the country -- while downplaying the true nature of the Iraq insurgency, which is largely homegrown or supported by our supposed ally, Saudi Arabia.
moreWell, of course! Marketing always
trumps national security in this administration:
A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.
Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company’s Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.
The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group’s communications network.
“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Rita Katz, the firm’s 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE’s methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.
The precise source of the leak remains unknown.
UPDATE: Buzzflash points out something I should have seen (but in my defense, I hadn’t yet had any caffeine:
Bizarre, Bizarre Bushevik Relationship with an “Anti-Terrorist” Organization Called “SITE” That We’ve Been Meaning to Write a News Analysis About. Okay, This Group Called “SITE” is Allegedly Finding Stuff Out About Al-Qaeda Before the Bush Administration, Such as the Alleged Latest Osama Tape with the Photo-Shopped Beard. Now, the Woman Who Runs It — Who Allegedly is Paid a Large Consulting Fee by The White House — is Accusing the Bush Administration of Destroying Her “Sources” for Finding Out Things About the “Terrorists” That the Bush Administration Doesn’t Know. So, She Goes to the Washington Post Complaining that the Bush Administration is Undercutting the War on Terrorism, In Essence, by Leaking the Alleged Osama Tape Too Early After She Sent it To Them. Our Question is Why is this Small Private Organization Called “SITE” Allegedly Beating Our Intelligence Agencies to Information About Osama? Why Isn’t the CIA The WH Source? Uh, This is Mind Boggling. And She Regularly Appears to be Supplying the Busheviks with “Secret” Information. This is THE Story that the WP Should be Investigating, Not Her Strange Whining to Them. What the Heck is “SITE” Doing Being Several Steps Ahead of the Combined Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Operation? Or are They Just a WH Propaganda Plant? A Very Strange Story Indeed.
Essentially, they hired a firm to track the bogeyman and then used the information gathered not to protect the country, but for political gain. Bin Laden roams free.
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