“Fox News had this transcript and had this video in some cases before F.B.I. agents did.” – Evan Kolmann
The “loophole” SITE Intelligence Group found into al Qaeda’s distribution systems was “remarkably ingenius and quite unusual.” In fact, according to Evan Kohlmann, he’d be “shocked” if the U.S. government had a “loophole” equivalent without SITE’s involvement, expertise and experience. Well, according to the Washington Post, Bush just burned it by giving a bin Laden video to Fox “News,” even after they were asked to keep it secret. For the current occupant of the White House, pr is all.
Here’s the deal. SITE (Search for International Terrorist Entities) Intelligence
Group got a secret tape on bin Laden, shared it with the Bush administration
who then leaked it to Fox “News” ruining years and years of intelligence work while simultaneously blowing out access to terrorists we need to track. If
a Democratic administration did something this unbelievably careless, stupid
and clumsy they’d be crucified and rightly so. George W. Bush and his people
are not only ignorant and incompetent, they’re dangerous. This is as serious as it gets.
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.
… ..Leak
Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda’s Secrets (emphasis added above)
Firm Says Administration’s Handling of Video Ruined Its Spying Efforts
It’s not known who leaked the information.
Where’s Scooter Libby these days? Just kidding.
But seriously, when Leiter and Fielding got the email with the link to the
private SITE internet page that had the bin Laden video and an English transcript,
Ms. Katz also wrote: “Please understand the necessity for secrecy … We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could
harm our investigations.” According to the Washington Post, within
minutes of sending the email to the White House, “government-registered
began downloading the video from SITE’s server, according to a log of file transfers.
The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers
with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.”
It wasn’t long before a copy was posted on the Fox “News”
website. Of course, since it went out to other sources it’s easy to imagine another posting of it as well. The thing is that’s not what happened. Fox had it first and posted it first, with sensitive details included.
A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News’s Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this
document,” Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network,
put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it
had obtained in the past, according to Katz. … ..
So, an intelligence firm attempting to help the U.S. government gets burned and so does their intel operation? All because they trusted the White House and the people working for Bush. Bet intel experts won’t make that mistake again. This type of screw up means al Qaeda has changed the way they operate, operational details that took SITE and other private intelligence firms years to build up. Intel professionals spend their lives trying to get a jump on terrorist organizations. Evan Kohlmann rightly reminds us that SITE and others like it came to this fight long before Bush. Now they’ve got to start all over.
The moral of this story is don’t trust the White House with information you don’t want leaked to Fox “News.” Saying it’s secret doesn’t matter.
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