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.
That’s how long it took the Bush administration between the time they learned of a secret "security breach" by a private U.S. company allowing for the monitoring of some al Qaeda internet communications, and the time the administration leaked it to Fox News, thereby alerting al Qaeda to the breach and closing down "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."
A lot of us spend day after day writing about this Administration into the cyberether for no other reason than to say the same thing over and over – our own government is both corrupt and inept. They are corrupt, because their actions are in the service of Administration’s goals and the Administration’s reputation, and not in the service of the goals and reputation of the American people. There is a fundamental flaw in a government that so sees itself as outside of the governed – a private government answering to no one. They are inept because not only are their activities corrupted by their own idiosyncratic views of the meaning of this country, they aren’t even good at being corrupt. They screw up all the time. We have a bunker mentality President and Vice President dreaming of new wars while the last bad one they started flounders, a Secretary of State who has been understandably marginalized by the world, an inoperative Justice Department, an unknown Secretary of Defense, and we occupy ourselves with a way premature future Presidential Race as the only hopeful diversion in this sea of incompetence.
What possible good can come from prematurely leaking an Osama Bin Laden tape to Fox News, and in doing so shutting down access to the al Qaeda Internet Network? How does jury-rigging the figures to make it look like a Surge of troops is doing anything for the Iraqis that they, or we, want? For that matter, how is ignoring the advice of our best and brightest – the Iraq Study Group – in our best interest?
It’s only a government of illusion, still trying to justify now ancient deceits and former mistakes that even their supporters know about. And in trying to maintain their illusion, they’ve compounded their errors over and over again. If there is a lesson here, it’s lost on me…
I heard on MSNBC that Fox News was given the tapes before the FBI and other law enforcement org. I quess as long as the WH gives Fox the latest stuff, they will continue to be Bush and Cheney’s good friends. Bush WH wanted to announce the lastest terror threat to scare the Democrats and the country to keep the powers they have in the NSA from being taken away. They seem to use the threats by keeping them in their back pocket for a rainy day. When is there going to be genuine outrage and disgust for the Bush Administration? I know that I have had enough for too long. This Bush/Cheney WH has been using fear to terrorize our country since 911. It’s a shame/ crime that neither person has a conscience.