Leak compromised access to al Qaeda data

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.

The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government's ability to anticipate attacks.

While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. "We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But privately, some intelligence officials called the incident regrettable, and one official said SITE had been "tremendously helpful" in ferreting out al-Qaeda secrets over time.

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A cynic might suggest that someone in the CIA leaked it to harm the competition. It has been an agency that has a record of leaking things to harm the administration's policies and this is the type of leak that might be consistent with the prior ones. The SITE capture of the prereleased video was a real coup that probably shook up the al Qaeda geek staff. My guess is SITE or the NSA will probably be able to out geek them pretty quickly.

Again, a cynic might think this story is a cover to get the al Qaeda geeks comfortable with their new security measures so that they start sending data again. It is a spooks world out there sometimes. SITE should be glad that the Democrats and the ACLU are not trying to prosecute them for reading al Qaeda's mail.

The Jawa Report questions whether SITE beat the government to the tape.

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So, SITE claims they are the source of the video given to the White House. Rita claims she personally gave the video to authorities on September 7th. But let's take a quick look at the very bottom of the translation of the video leaked by ABC's Blotter:

That means that the White House had a translation of the video a full 24 hours before SITE intercepted it. Apparently, our intel guys are better than we thought.

Sure, the fools over at al Ekhlaas have closed down their back room, but that doesn't mean there aren't other back rooms.

So, just because SITE's intel source got burned, doesn't mean that we've lost capability of tracking al Qaeda online. In fact, SITE was not the only one that had the "new" bin Laden 9/11 video before it was supposed to be released, as these two articles suggest.

Both Intel Center and Laura Mansfield also had the video. Hell, I had the video.

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It sounds like multiple parties have breached al Qaeda's firewall. That is good. It will have a harder time blocking them all.