Free Republic

SNIPPET: "WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- A blackout of al-Qaida's main Web sites is in its 11th day, and officials think the forums may have been brought down in a cyberattack. While no one has claimed credit for disabling the sites..." SNIPPET: "The loss of information typically confuses and frustrates the readers of the Web sites. "It leaves the rank-and-file to guess which messages and which messengers are genuine al-Qaida, and provides undercover operators with new opportunities to disrupt the movement," said A. Aaron Weisburd, senior fellow at the Homeland Security Policy Institute."

On July 31, the Sunday Times of Britain ran a story headlined, "Finger points to British intelligence as al-Qaeda websites are wiped out." The next day, Matt Drudge linked the story on his big-splash Monday website. The story said, "Over the past fortnight Israeli intelligence agents have noticed something distinctly odd happening on the internet. One by one, Al-Qaeda's affiliated websites have vanished until only a handful remain, write Uzi Mahnaimi and Alex Pell." The story carried no byline. In the next several days, no news outlet followed up this claim. Bloggers linked to it aplenty, and some commented that...