In 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!!“
2 Trackbacks To “Bush Gang Mishandles al Qaeda Video; Sacrifices Investigation, National Security“
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/pho.....otoid=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.co.....them-over/
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 ju