White House burns covert intel source -- again
MSNBC:
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.Like Valerie Plame, the founder of the company is a woman, Rita Katz.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 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.Yes, well.The precise source of the leak remains unknown.
No doubt the White House will release a statement saying that if there had been a leak from this administration, they'll want to know who it is... and if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of.
Comments
Interesting from Buzzflash via Suburban Guerrilla:
I guess she didn't believe Cheney when he said the check was in the mail.
Posted by: Mark Adams | October 9, 2007 02:21 PM
Everything eventually will be privatized and our elected officials will borrow 100% of the money needed to pay the private contractors.
Yippee! No more taxes, no more federal government.
The End.
Posted by: Ara Rubyan | October 9, 2007 03:27 PM
"Yippee! No more taxes, no more federal government."
True, the Chinese don't do federalism. I wonder how the free-marketeers (almost as smart as Mouseketeers but without the cool hats) will feel when they realize that western free market capitalism helped communism defeat America. If your cognition returns when you die, Reagan must be spinning like New York Stock Exchange ticker.
Posted by: shep | October 9, 2007 04:02 PM
Digby connects the dots we all should have seen. It seems the beard was real, the rest of the bin Laden tape was fake.
She was burned on purpose. That'll teach her to sell Cheney a bill of goods.
Posted by: Mark Adams | October 9, 2007 10:59 PM