Posted on 01/10/2006 7:40:42 PM PST by jmc1969
Inside CIA headquarters, a high-tech monitoring operation scores an intelligence coup, obtaining a close-up photo of an Iranian nuclear facility.
The source: an Iranian blog discovered in the vast labyrinth of the Internet, CBS News correspondent David Martin reports.
Elliot Jardines is this United States' first director for open source intelligence, an unusual job in a business that usually keeps its sources secret.
For Jardines, useful intelligence lies in plain sight.
"Pretty much anything we need is available through open sources," Jardines says.
Jihadist Web sites are not likely to give away the whereabouts of a wanted terrorist like Abu Musab al Zarqawi or Osama bin Laden, but they do reveal other things about them.
"There's a lot of interest in 'Is Osama bin Laden losing market share?' if you will. How is he playing vis-a-vis Zarqawi," Naquin says.
He adds that, "Osama bin Laden hasn't said anything for months and so Zarqawi seems to be really taking up the mantle."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
Damn, I wish I had these guys jobs. Searching blogs for intel and getting paid for it seems quite nice.
Open source is great. That's why Jim has "Loose lips sink ships" in red when we type a post.
Note to CBS and the rest of the MSM, when the CIA goes searching for intelligence on the Internet they turn to the blogs like the rest of the country is doing.
Talk about loose lips, why give a heads up on what we are doing?
Recruited at Spring Break 2003!
"There's a lot of interest in 'Is Osama bin Laden losing market share?' if you will. How is he playing vis-a-vis Zarqawi," Naquin says.
He adds that, "Osama bin Laden hasn't said anything for months and so Zarqawi seems to be really taking up the mantle."
LOL!
Particularly when you realize how many military people, defense contractor employees, law enforcement (etc, etc) and their friends and family post here.
The same is true overseas. People chat with their friends and families about stuff that maybe they shouldn't, and the friend/family thinks "this is so interesting, I just GOTTA mention it in my blog!"
Of course, mixed in with the good info is a lot of disinformation. If you can't stop all the leaks, then the next best thing is to flood the pipeline with so much deliberate disinformation that there's no way to tell what's good and what's bad
I wonder whether we should let them in on what we think Zawahiri is up to . . .
;-)
Or where to find him...:-)
And now that we've been outed as not-so-undercover amateur spooks, do you think we could get the Justice Department to waste millions investigating how it didn't really happen?
As long as I don't have to pose in my PJ's...for photos...its not a good sight...I might have to buy new sweatpants..
You know, I never thought about it before, but I wonder whether that photo was a subtle hint that ol' Valerie is an undercover member of the pajamahideen:
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/01/about-that-uranium-in-niger.html
Anyway, any member in good standing of the pajamahideen should be proud to wear the "uniform."
All kidding aside, this does point out that a forum like FR, which draws numerous posts from perceptive people watching the blogs, etc. must be at times poking around the edges of serious intel analysis. And sometimes the stuff we see discussed here is just in left field (but hey, so is the CIA at times, as well).
Just curious. Why does searching the internet for pictures of Irans nuclear sites warrant such merit and Colin Powell showing Iraq's capabilities to the entire world via satellite imagery is viewed as fabricated?
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