Bush Gang Mishandles al Qaeda Video; Sacrifices Investigation, National Security
By Steve Benen Monday Oct 08, 2007 8:16pmIn the midst of an ongoing policy debate over how much power the Bush administration should have to obtain surveillance powers, the White House has demonstrated once again that it simply can’t be trusted to handle national security information responsibly.
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.
In this case, SITE obtained the most recent Osama bin Laden video several days before it went public. Though the company is a for-profit enterprise, SITE contacted White House counsel Fred Fielding and Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2 job at the National Counterterrorism Center, with a link to a private SITE page containing the video and an English transcript. “Please understand the necessity for secrecy,” SITE’s founder Rita Katz wrote in her email. “We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations.”
That was at 10 am on Sept. 7. Within a few hours, it was on several television news outlets. Katz told the WaPo, “Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless.”
Remind me, who thinks the White House is trustworthy on national security issues?
Larry Johnson has more: "Bush Leaks Sink America’s Security. DUH!!"
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What has the administration gotten its hands on that it hasn't royally messed up? Anything?
Oh please. Don't fall for this. The tape was a fake. The Bin Laden speech was a fake. This story is a fake.
Already sent a letter to the editor on this one, pointing out that this isn't the first time that the Bush Administration has destroyed an intelligence operation in the name of political expedience.
justaguy @ 2:
I agree with you there. I'm not convinced by it, either.
I am convinced that mishandling this kind of info is what happens when impeachment is off the table.
Olbermann had a good segment about this tonight.
justaguy @ 2:
Prove that this story is a fake! Even if the tape itself was a fake, the intelligence gathering techniques used to get it weren't. The fact that those operations are now dead thanks to the leak is also not bogus. So put up (the facts to your claim) or shut up.
could be wrong but the latest Bin Laden tapes look like advanced computer animation to me
justaguy @ 2:
Please don't feed the conspiracy troll.
Even if the tape was faked, which wouldn't be a surprise, leaking of this nature is treason. It is a crime against the U.S..
Is there anything this Administration does not put below politics? Notice that the information was leaked right before the Patreaus hearings. So it's political significance in scoring points outweighed it's national security value. I swear we're a nation run by a bunch of Peters from the Family Guy!
Comparison:
Leak about black sites and torture:Bad Thing
Leak about operative in Al Qaeda and leaked video showing hacked links to world: Good Thing
Bush Administration: doing our best to promote national insecurity.
Seems very amateurish to post sensitive intelligence on the net... I'd say SITE needs to bone up on their own security protocols first.
Oh, and don't trust the White House.
Incompetence at it's finest.
Utter claptrap. Boo! The EEvil Al Kida is out ta get us. Be afeared. Be very afreared. Please. Americans actually believe this BS, knowing how much the bush regime lies? Come on people.
One of the worst parts is this might not be a "sexy" enough story for the general public to catch on and care... or really even comprehend.
w.smith @ 12:
Who's to say that SITE didn't provide a protected page to it's WH sources (e.g. password protected)? There are a lot of things held behind closed doors on the internet. I'm guessing if they are savy enough to hack into a large scale server, they are smart enough to not essentially put the video on youtube.
That said, it was probably a VERY stupid idea to give it to the freaking WH counsel. What were they thinking? Why not head of the CIA or someone who could actually use the info? So you're right... don't trust the WH.
OH but those darn conspiracy theorists will believe anything these days. Forget the fact Bush has consistently jacked up all half ass efforts to get bin laden, almost as if he doesn’t want to.
VegasRage @ 17:
Could be because he doesn't want to. OBL is the gift that keeps giving. Expect to see him again in Oct. '08.
Or as I like to call this story,
"Bush Administration Tries To Prove They Can't Keep Secrets From The Press"
A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month,
Red flag. I'd like to know who's paying for this "private" company and what influence they have in current foreign affairs. What's their makeup, authority, experience and credibility level. Why was the tape not analyzed by CIA, NSA, etc. before release? Even the hard right wingers I work with said that video was probably faked. Smells like stench.
http://www.defenselink.mil/photos/newsphoto.aspx?newsphotoid=6628
The Bushies are great at keeping secrets ...
from the American people that is.
In contrast they seem to commit lots of leaks and miscues which give significant aid to the terrorists (e.g., this leak, Plame, British terror bust, etc.); a suspicious mind might think the Bush administration is riddled with treasonous Al Qaeda moles.
w.smith @ 12:
Well, it's not as if they left anything unsecure or that someone hacked it. SITE gave free govt intel agency access to info that they hadn't even yet made available to their pay service (that is expensive and hard to join), which is the responsible thing to do, and Bushco blew it.
"Bush gang mishandles al Qaeda video."
WTF?!!!
How do you know it wasn't intentional? You know, be afraid. BE VERY AFRAID. VOTE REPUBLICON. (Of course, the hillbilly crowd,seeing as how they don't read newspapers, hasn't even seen the polls showing their fear BS doesn't work any more.) By now, my first assumption for BushCo would be to assume IT WAS AN INTENTIONAL LEAK. We know the Bush Administration is incompetent, but nonetheless, how could this intel be ACCIDENTLY shared with news outlets within hours?
Why does this not surprise me? As Gunnery Sgt. Hartman said to Gomer Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, "the best part of you ran down your momma's leg and ended up as a brown stain on the mattress" The only difference between Pyle and Bush is at least Pyle intended on serving his country at war.
When Bush does it, it's not a leak. It's "catapulting the propaganda".
can we call this treason yet?
ThunderNutz @ 25:
Ah shit, I crack myself up
Tim V @ 16.. true. true... i don't know the security specifics, but even the most secure site is worthless if the link (and logins?) are passed around via e-mail and then leaked to fox "news"... yeesh.
I really wonder what the specifics were though... could the video be downloaded? Could they have locked the views to one only? Is this a common practice in the administration? Are they posting sensitive info to YouTube? :o)
Our country's participation with Al Caeda has been disastrous to say the least since our involvement with them in the 1980's war between the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. I hope a little more research is done on this tragedy and relationship in the future. What the hell is happening in this country.
Didn't AOL feature a prominent story on the "Terror-Fighting Mom" who "discovered" a new bin Laden tape while web-surfing against terrorists in-between taking kids to soccer games and cooking dinner? And it had a picture of some woman in giant eyeglasses and a perm that was about 25 years out of date? And under the picture it said the terror-fighting mom who monitors Islamic "fundamentalist" sites (because she hapens to speak fluent Arabic) wanted to remain anonymous, so her name was not used?
I swear you cannot make up worse fake stories than the Bush administration does. And then AOL prints these blatantly phony stories without a second thought.
More mish-mash of the mashups. Al-Quaeda puts out an easily provable fake mashup (hell, it would be AMAZING if OBL's kidneys lasted this long, after all), the Bushies seize upon it and screwup their own intelligence ops (where have we seen this before?), but's it's all good in fairy-tale nutcase-land where Osama Bin Bogeyman scares the chillun's for yet another encore.
Just in time for Halloween, no less.
WooooooooooH!
I think this a piece with ratcheting up terror alerts to help the administration politicaly. The just could'nt wait to let this one out once they had it. They saw OBL as a gift. Btw OBL sees GWB as a gift.
The tape was a fake. The Website OP was closed down for a reason. It was as much a leak as when Cheney quoted the NY Times
on his own "leak" to them. The most likely reason it was closed down was because it was time to move on. Another disinfo site is probably already up. They are just playing the whole "We screwed up" act.
Peace.
A question comes to mind: Why is the U.S., with a massive intelligence structure, farming work out to a lady behind a computer in New Jersey (SITE)? Has it come down to this? That our intelligence community can't gather intelligence.... and that once they gain some information they broadcast it to the world?
Jeebus.
Look that security company was actually getting useful intelligence and shrub co. can't have anyone actually stopping the 'terrists' because peace is bad for business. They were just 'leveling the playing field' for concerned business interests. It's only fair.
I do not believe one syllable of it. This is an attempt to legitimize the bouillschitt al kayda videos they have been pimping with incredibly strategic timing(like justs before a bill gets passed), but we're supposed to believe it's a coincidence. See the many Olberman videos on the nexus of terror and politics.
This is a repug contractor doing outsourced CIA work and we're supposed to believe now that Congress/Senate must give booschaineyCo the new FISA law to compensate for the compromised security.
If they wanted bin bushin, they would have had him by now. the info was given to faux news, who we know does the bidding of the white house. if the whitehouse did not want something made public, fux would not do it. period.
nothing was compromised.
this is another hoax from fux and the rovian whitehouse.
I agree with #2... this is totally fake news. They knew it would get to the liberal blogs because it makes the administration look incompetant. It's crap, the bin Laden video is fake and the"company that "intercepts" the videos is actually the one that makes them.
George W. Bush.
My Little Goat.
Thankfully the people know where to get the real news.
Keep those internet sites, satellite stations,
short wave frequencies and IP radio programs going.
I am currently listening to former Military and NSA Intelligence officials discussing this
and other related criminal activities of the Bush Administration.
They have never seen anything like this.
Then you have to ask why these former experts
not asked to be on the "cable news shows" ?
Oh. I just remembered.
The "U.S. media networks" have been overtaken by the propaganda
arm of the criminal enterprise that still occupies the White House.
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/iraq-to-blackwater-get-out-pa...
Blackwater has been told to Get out in 6 months and hand over the guards that killed 17 civilians, but most of the MSM doesn't mention these two parts of the deal; just the 8 million dollars per family.
Translation; tax payers pay the 8 million per and the White House kills off a few Iraqi legisators to keep from removing Blackwater.
Bascombe.. why would they leak a story about their own ineptitude.unless it was to give it credibility?
Let's take a trip down memory lane....
7/14/05
ABC News just reported that the British authorities say they have evidence that the London attacks last week were an operation planned by Al Qaeda for the last two years. This was an operation the Brits thought they caught and stopped in time, but they were wrong. The piece of the puzzle ABC missed is that this is an operation the Bush administration helped botch last year.
1. The London bombers, per ABC, are connected to an Al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in Lahore, Pakistan.
2. Pakistani authorities recovered the laptop of a captured Al Qaeda leader, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, on July 13, 2004. On that laptop, they found plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway. According to an expert interviewed by ABC, "there is absolutely no doubt that Khan was part of a worldwide Al Qaeda operation, not just in the United States but also in Great Britain and throughout the west."
3. ABC reports that names in the computer matched a suspected cell of Britain's of Pakistani decent, many of who lived near the town of Luton, England. According to ABC, authorities thought they had stopped the subway plot with the arrest of more than a dozen people last year. Obviously, they hadn't.
4. Those arrests were the arrests that the Bush administration botched by announcing a heightened security alert the week of the Democratic Convention. Because the US let the cat out of the bag, the media got a hold of Khan's name, his Al Qaeda contacts found out he was co-opted, and they fled. The Brits had to have a high speed chase to catch some of them as they fled, and, according to press reports, the Brits and Pakistanis both fear that some slipped away.
whomod @ 43:
yes...I remember this story....thanks
willyloman @ 41:
this ain't gonna go over well in the coming election cycle.
willyloman @ 41:
hand the guards over to who?
They don't have a govt.Let alone a judicial system.
Today's revelations in the Washington Post regarding the Bush administration's September 7th leaking of an Osama Bin Laden videotape served to once again highlight the hypocritical Republican double-standard when it comes to the publication of classified national security information.
As the CIA black sites and illegal NSA domestic surveillance stories all show, the President and his amen corner are quick to call for the prosecution of those who reveal White House criminality. But when Bush and his GOP allies through political calculation or just sheer incompetence release national security secrets, that's another matter altogether.
For the details, see:
"Leaked Bin Laden Tape Shows GOP Double Standard."
Another Bush failure. It never seems to stop with him and his cronies.
The only thing that's fake is BushCo's "War on Terror" and patriotism. They'll do anything to scare us and they don't give a shit about compromising national security.
I'm not sure I've ever seen the word "Get's" used in quite that way.
Learn something every day.
As to the story: "duh!" Don't share info with the White House directly! Jesus, where have these clowns been the last 6 years (unless they were trying to trade info for access)? Share it directly with the intelligence agencies only! CIA, NSA... your local FBI office -- preferably someone that actually does work rather than a political hack installed by the president. Whatever. Sure the Administration might intercept and seize on it for politics still, but that is certain if you just hand it over the the WH directly. If you had an interesting secret you wanted to stay secret, would you tell the White House counsel? Bush's own lawyer? One of the guys deeply involved in Nixon's Watergate business (as deputy to John Dean, Nixon's counsel)? Of course, the whole story sounds fishy, or at least incomplete. (Make haste in donning our tinfoil helms of paranoia!)
My favorite quote from the article: "The precise source of the leak remains unknown. "
Really? Even though this lady has logs of where and what IP address accessed the information when? If someone inside the Administration cared, they could probably find the leak in a day just through simple elimination.
whomod @ 43:
Excellent post!
As I remember it, the ringleader disappeared from London just ahead of the events(possibly by as much as two days.). the six kids involved were duped into carrying the bombs. an overeager shithead bobbie blew off a brazilian's brain with six to the noggin after a mistaken identity and blair said: "good job".
for some reason, the role of the US in the screwups was suppressed for about two weeks while the teeerrraaaahhhhh refrain hit the airwaves at high decibels.
mudshark @ 42:
why else indeed?
bush=al quaida
i have said it before, the 911 attack was mostly saudis, bush grounds all airlines except he secretly flies the ben laden family out of the country. it's not a co-incidence that every time bush needs an excuse to push his illegal agenda that osama just happens to give us a new threat from al quaida.
bush and al quaida are the same terrorists = enemy combattants of the USA
BaScOmBe @ 37:
Not one to recycle aluminum/tin-foil into hats, but damn...that makes too much sense. Especially as it will change nobody's opinion of the administration (if you still support these fools, you are either too weak willed to fight propaganda or your way too much an ideolog for appeals of reason and evidence).
Wonder what Mr. Occam's razor would say about it?
BaScOmBe @ 52:
sorry for the stupid question.......must be my muscle relaxers......or a little cerebral flatulence.......or both......after I posted my comment I realized the answer....that being said ....gn...and be well.
perhaps the tape came from a cia black ops site and now the site has to shut down. they got caught by an intel hobbyist.
Beware, tin-foil hat statement below:
If you want to maintain power through fear of an ethereal external threat, you can't just go along & remove that threat now can you? bin Laden bin Hiding in Pakistan for years just to keep the kettle on the boil.
This is PARTICULARY true when you've an upcoming federal election your partyhas no hope in hades of winning without a justifiable fear of an ethereal external threat. bin Laden's existence & power as a symbol is still extremely useful to the republican party. I'm sure we'll here more from him in the near future.
=my2c
Can Bush fire himself? blast, i dont think so. he clearly isnt fit for the job he holds. yes, i know: no duh.
I've got a question: How did a small time "private intelligence" firm manage to scoop the 3 letter agencies with their enormous budgets? Second question: If "private intelligence" firms are able to get the goods on Al Queida, what's to keep the government (especially THIS government) from contracting them to spy on average Americans. Remember: the Constitution only bars the Government from things like surveillance and wiretapping (or at least it did) not private companies.
This is f*king huge, people. Do you remember the Ghost-talkers of World War 2, the Navajos who fooled the Japanese? This is - literally - the equivalent of releasing a report on Ghost-talkers native dialect to the media mid-war.
the junta doesn't care how many people die as long as Fox gets their scoop welfare
Get it straight...al-Qaeda was made up in a New York federal court room in January of 2001 by the CIA.
The idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organized terrorist network is an illusion. It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media.
WAKE UP!!
burnt @ 60:
Right, except you can't wage war against an ideology.
This is a fiasco to be sure, and I'd bet it was released by the administration as an excuse to crack down even harder on or freedoms and justify even more secrecy on their part.
Watch for the next week, you'll see I'm right.
Same old shit, different day.
Jimmi the Grey @ 54:
I'm betting the razor sez that the administration needs to scare Congress into passing that piece of shite.
gene214 @ 59:
First answer: Because government agencies are being outsourced to private companies. It's not widely known, but most of the "middle level" civil servants have been pushed out in favour of private firms doing the work under no-bid contracts.
Second answer: Absolutely nothing, thanks to Congress and the "scaredy-cats".
Rita Katz, the founder of SITE runs a business that thrives on hype and fear mongering. She is an Israeli, her family immigrated from Iraq at a time when many Jews left for the "promised land". She claims to speak Arabic and Hebrew. I find it highly unlikely that Katz is in it for anything but money. Why would the CIA and the White House outsource their intelligence gathering to some hack like her is beyond me. People are quick to blame and criticize the white house in this case. I don't blame those people one bit, given the current administration's track record and the Valerie Plame
incident, but one must consider the other possibilities here. Katz is simply out to make a name for herself knowing full well that gullible people will be more inclined to buy into her story than believe the WH. That way, she gets the recognition she so desperately needs to turn a profit and make it in the "post 9/11 terrorism expert" business.
The Keystone Cops, The Three Stooges, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, and Gilligan could not have gotten together and fucked up this country any better than these clowns have. At least the former would have made us laugh a little as the ship went down.
Bin Laden is Emmanuel Goldstein, and we've always been at war with...(fill in the blank)
Symes @ 64:
I normally do not comment here simply because I have other obligations and forums that I am fully engaged in,but this was something I couldn't let go. Symes is right this is a ploy to get the public to give the intelligence community and law enforcement more power to to carry out surveillance on us all.This has been the driving factor behind the war on terror all along.The only terrorist there ever were they created and then killed or have locked up. COME ON!!!Well thats my 2 cents worth.Ron Paul or DIE!!!
Who is SITE and why do they have better access to the terrorists than the CIA and why talk about the leak? It is all very convenient that we must all be scared of terr'rists again isn't it? If they were a real counter-intelligence operation, if someone leaked this info, wouldn't they shut-up and let someone else take the fall? Is SITE taking the fall in order to cover up real intelligence, or are they really that stupid that when the leak occurs they jump up and say "yep, that was our intelligence we gathered and now we're f*cked from here on out!" Just doesn't make sense. If it's their business to be stealthy then they stay stealthy and don't suddenly turn into a terrorist PR operation. If SITE is really Israeli intelligence and we know AIPAC and PNAC are itchin' for a fight with Iran, then I say we hold our horses and let's treat this whole thing like the domestic psy-op that it is.
Symes @ 63:
Intelligence Gathering != War
Hacking is way way way more than just 1's and 0's. Its about getting to know a culture, and often a specific work team. So that - say your enemy/target buys/installs a new server. You can see a new address on the new route tables because you hacked their domain name server or something... - but you don't know the server name or root/admin pass.
But... if you're a good hacker, you already know the admin names all his servers after Scooby Doo characters, for example. Or maybe you already heard through the grapevine, cuz you setup a grapevine, that whenever the admin has to create an "unbreakable" system of new admin passwords, he looks around his desk and picks an object, and writes it in "hacker" code. So, like "st@pl3r" instead of "stapler"...
So a few tries, and you can get the new server. Using um - code and tricks that exploits the 1's and 0's. - *THAT'S* proper hacking. I mean, I simplified it, but I've done Network Security for a couple of different (major) firms, and thats how paranoid they intend to make you feel. You secure yourself and your team to the point that you become paranoid of being predictable... and you propogate this kind of secured mindset onto others who use the computers (AND DATA!) you're protecting.
Firms without a capable, strong Security department, ultimately become predictable to people who need/want to view them as a target. If they're big agencies, and they become compromised to the point of embarrassment and/or losing customers... what a company ALWAYS does is quickly close gaps, then quickly upgrade security. Maybe even be a bit humble and seek out proper consulting.
Think credit card database hacks of the late 90's and early 2000's.
Firms without a capable, strong Security department, that are big - are usually run by older school, arrogant heads. Not always - but often.
At a glance, Al Qaeda's leadership may seem "technological", but to me they look a little old school. More shit like the late 90's and early 2000's employed... and more of an embrace of I guess this analog, data-delivery-based method of external communication and internal collaboration.
new school tricks to get through systems, and at data, allowed us to obtain an Al Qaeda communication a week before even Al Jazeera got it.
and we fucked that up.
Not only has Al Qaeda patched up the specific hole or point of entry that this team used to get in... they've questioned the guys and the team who left this hole opened, and they're probably completely re-structuring a whole lot of shit right now.
this could easily set back any attempt to expedite the timetable to get soldiers home. this compromises soldiers engaged in undercover communications with Al Qaeda hacker nerd types. this is literally, as bad as exposing Navajos during WW2.
this is bigger than Valerie Plame.
this is huge.
Why would the CIA and the White House outsource their intelligence gathering to some hack like her is beyond me.
Uh, because she's probably got ties to some heavy duty, deep-pocketed friends within the pro-Israel lobby, that's why.
justaguy @ 2:
You have that right! But it's still unnerving to know he about our security.
His lies are so transparent and one sided. chimpy creates the bullshit, then he hires his bullshit bullshitters to fuck it up more.
And the congress is filing their nails, scratching their heads...
And the people say get a more on.
I think chimpy believes that the Iraqi people will lay down their arms.
It's not a war on terror (I don't see chimpy taking over England because of car bombs or people bombs.)
We are know he hires yes men.
Now I'm really pissed!
BaScOmBe @ 37:
You are absolutely right. Why doesn't bin Laden hold a newspaper up, so we can verify his exist?
Inexcusable.
why is it that the media continues to be surprised at the depth of this admin. stupidity and untrustworthiness with a few exceptions
TimV @ 6:
The story may not be fake, but it is stupid. What does it really mean for a private company to classify something? Nothing, I tellz you!
"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."
Please re consider this paragraph and give it a little thought. How can this possibly be true? This "intelligence company" has immediate access to the WH inner circle? The release happens in a matter of hours by-passing government analysis and scrutiny?
Is it not reasonable to expect a company with a track record of doing this kind of work would have a go to guy in the intelligence community to manage the asset?
Who among you when working for a corporation or enterprise, upon discovering a reportable item first sends it to the CEO's office?
This cannot hold up.
timmm @ 77:
This is a new defense. Usually, it's Bill Clinton did it too.
Whether or not the tape was a fake, the leak wasn't. It's just another photo op as far as the WH is concerned. They cared nothing about Plame's assets - anyone who had contact with her is probably looking at the brown side of the grass. They care nothing for our own military - "We 'preciate yer sacrifrice (suckers)." And Iraqis are just collateral damage.
Face facts trolls - your leader is just interested in looking like he's tough on terrorists to keep the tiny brained folk content and voting for the next sonuvabitch in line. That would be ole 9/11 Rudy.
Ohe yeah, you're correct about one thing. Private companies can't do anything about breaches of security - except stop sharing.
This would be serious if there was such a thing as al Quaeda.
Critical thinkers know there is not.
So what we have is another Pentagon Productions, Inc. phoney video, supposedly intersepted by the non-credible SITE.
Funny how SITE is more successful than the NSA or CIA.
If this has destroyed a years-long surrveillance operation, the obvious point is that the Bush regime has also known exactly where Bin Ladin and company have been hiding out all this time. They've chosen to do nothing with that knowledge.
The Bin Ladin family has been financing the Bush Crime Family for decades. Saladin Bin Ladin was a board member on the Carlisle Group until unfavorable press forced the Company to arrange his departure. My read is that the WH is just protecting the hand tht feeds it. Bush is corrupt, he doesn't wat the gravy train to end, while the neocons don't want to sacrifice their favorite boogeyman - the one they use to legitimaize their destruction of the Constitution and the country.
The story is absurd on its face, material evidence excluded.
these elaborate hoaxes are becoming more and more desperate as times goes by.
"obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month"
Bin Laden has official product release dates and pirating problems? Weird world. Maybe he needs a good copyright lawyer. Unleash the MPAA against the administration and he'd have a savage WMD.
It doesn't MATTER whether the tape was a fake, people, only that the Bush Administration once again exposed top secret information publicly for political purposes.
GOP: We'll never let safety and security get in the way of profit...
I am pissed - and you know what? Many Americans don't even know what's going on. Bush is a liar and a traitor. Cheney is a liar and a traitor. Next is Condi - and the beat goes on.
This is no accident; the Bush White House doesn't care about our security or putting an end to Al Qaida. The Bush White House cares only about perpetuating the MIC that controls it, and by extension, us. War is good for these corporations - suffering is the fuel that keeps the war machine running.
There is no interest in "capturing" Bin Laden. He was/is a CIA operative. We are being manipulated and misled into thinking that this war on terror is something finite or is even truly a war on terror. It's not - it's a war for the sake of war for profit. We are all expendable.
DaveInRhodeIsland @ 88:
Osama (a.k.a. Usama) is dead.
switchgrass @ 20:
The company is run by a 44 year old Iraqi-American woman whose father was killed by Saddam Hussein when she was young. Since that time she has been interested in following terrorism and finding them. The US govt pays for the intelligence that the company gathers. She has highly skilled engineers who are experts at intercepting internet communications.
Not all the best web savvy nerds and intelligence experts work for the US government such as the NSA. There are plenty of small minority owned contractors out there (I've worked for a few at NASA, NIH and the DoD) that develop high-end internet technologies and methodologies. Many of these companies work on-site at government facilities.
The company is obviously upset about the leak but I also think they were too hasty in handing it over to the White House. They should have protected themselves and only give it to one trusted White House aid (not that anyone of them can be trusted) instead of 3.
Remind me, who thinks the White House is trustworthy on national security issues?
every single 30%ter AND the media=51%.
[...] Crooks and Liars A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama [...]
Actually, Bush's administration is very good at keeping secrets. If this is real they wanted people to know about it. If this is fake they wanted people to hear it. What are they up to now?
That's Dumya supporting the troops and protecting America.
#90
Chip,
I defer to your work experience in America. To be clear then, it is believable that bona fida intelligence can flow in and end up in the news by suppertime.
Hello, this is a very old way of "leaking" lies to give them credibility. It's called a setup. The tape is a fake and the "small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups" is just another arm of the CIA. What surprises me there are people stupid enough to fall for the very old tricks chimpy and darth use.
Didn't booshco also foul up two British investigations with their early releases?
One would think booshco is protecting Al Qaeda.
Chip @ 90:
What does being killed by Saddam have to do with finding terrorists? Why isn't she fascinated with ruthless dictators instead? Rita Katz grew up in Israel. She went to the University of Tel Aviv.
In this case, SITE was careless for opening the floodgates.
They should have had someone fly to Pakistan and mail it to Fielding and Leiter.
That way SITE would had kept their cover and Osama would be wondering who he cannot trust.
Actually, catching Bin Laden is the last thing that Bush wants to do. He doesn't want the public to think that the War on Terrorism is over. There has been a WOT since the achilles lauro, but that wasn't a date that would live in infamy.
Isn't that treasonous?
Rita Katz grew up in Israel. She went to the University of Tel Aviv.
Enough said.
[...] Crooks and Liars [...]
Now is the time for all good hackers to come to the aid of their country. I bet that an army of hackers could find out more about this government than we could imagine. Might be interesting. But, I am not suggesting that.
Another fake tape.
C&L-show some courage.
tim osman (love the name BTW). Glad somebody put it together. Shhhhhhhh. mossad. shhhhhhhhh hasbara.
Christ, stop the world, I want to get off.
Cythraul @ 8:
Here's something you need to know. Before SITE institute, when Rita Katz and John Loftus -- who are both pro-War on Terror -- were investigating apparently legitimate cases of terrorist financing in the US, the ran into some unexpected roadblocks. DoJ, FBI, and CIA. Katz said she and her staff (spies themselves) were followed, surveilled, and harassed at work and at home by white vans with tinted windows, DoJ (Chertoff) tried to obstruct, and the CEO one of their targets -- Ptech -- got a private meeting with Mueller.
I think this indictment even came out on Fox.
Well, Ptech not only has connections to "Al-Qaeda", it has computer contracts with the US Navy, DoJ, FBI, IRS, and White House and maybe a few more. Indira Singh, a former systems security expert for Morgan-Stanley and a rescuer at Ground Zero, got fired from her job while trying to ensure security by actually investigating Ptech before handing them one of the contracts. The responses she got from people in FBI were pretty fascinating. Talk on Gunsandbutter.net.
So if SITE is still in the anti-terror (and pro-Israel) business (really), but something is way fishy here.
Besides this ONE of many examples of the entire bogus nature -- not "mistakes" -- in the war on terror, it's also easy to read from the horse's mouth that top Neo-cons and others not only wanted but NEEDED Americans to be attacked in 2001, and considered such an attack "LUCKY" and vital, in context of the ambitious and extreme military revolution they wanted to roll out.
See my link for more if interested.
What I meant by "pro-War on Terror" is that Loftus is aware of Bush and Republican connections to Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda related groups, and he has exposed numerous instances of protecting the terrorists, as has Sy Hersh. Loftus had many roadblocks himself, and is aware of links btw Islamists, CIA Allen Dulles, and Bush, but he seems to want to stick to some narrow argument.
Al-Qaeda is a name made up by NY prosecutors before OBL used it, and OBL is working a branch of the WACL. Get your Googles running!
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