Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets

Joby Warrick, Washington Post: 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. (More)

LSB: First, we have an outside, contracted firm that found something an untold number of US intelligence agencies failed to find. How does that happen, and how secure does that make me feel about the effectiveness of our government spy agencies. Secondly, as soon as the Bush administration finds out anything about Al-Qaeda - and it has to be someone fairly high level, not just some flunkie in the mail room - its first thought is to run to FAUX News? So any future intel to Al-Qaeda is now lost due to an overzealous leaker. Wanna bet we'll never find out who the leaker might be and that the leaker will never see the light of a courtroom for this incompetence? Are the Keystone Cops in charge at the White House?