Posted on 12/22/2005 5:15:33 AM PST by ironman
President Bush asserted this week that the news media published a U.S. government leak in 1998 about Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and prompting him to abandon the device. The story of the vicious leak that destroyed a valuable intelligence operation was first reported by a best-selling book, validated by the Sept. 11 commission and then repeated by the president. A leak alerted Osama bin Laden to telephone surveillance, according to President Bush and others. A leak alerted Osama bin Laden to telephone surveillance, according to President Bush and others. (AP) Who's Blogging? Read what bloggers are saying about this article. * wandering hillbilly * Donlan???s Diversions * True Blue Liberal Full List of Blogs (10 links) » Most Blogged About Articles On washingtonpost.com | On the web But it appears to be an urban myth. The al Qaeda leader's communication to aides via satellite phone had already been reported in 1996 -- and the source of the information was another government, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan at the time.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The author confirms a leak that we were listening in: "It was not until Sept. 7, 1998 -- after bin Laden apparently stopped using his phone -- that a newspaper reported that the United States had intercepted his phone calls and obtained his voiceprint."
Just exactly when/why bin Laden stopped using his phone we don't really know.
The prohibition of aiding the enemy is not conditioned on whether the enemy actually benefits from the aid on a given traitor's schedule.
D'OH!
Good one.
Battery died........
Hmm. Let's see now. Should I believe the Washington Post or my son's Commander in Chief whom he has the highest respect for.
Gee, not even a contest. Thank you President Bush for everything you are doing for us with little thanks from those that benefit.
The Washington Post is using bloggers to verify their positions now?
NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem has tracked bin Laden’s activities since the mid-1990s. For a time, he used satellite phones, but that ended after a leak revealed that the U.S. was listening in.
I believe that there was a story about the Isrealis in the papers around that time. They used a missile that was guided by a cell phone to kill a terrorist leader.
Good find, Coop. This is yet another attempt by the MSM to try and discredit every word out of the president's mouth.
There are too many leaks of information that is under investigation. Although the successes are nice to know from a morale standpoint, there are a lot of reports in a variety of cases and instances that are being leaked.
And not just the War on Terror, but other criminal investigations and pre-investigations.
Exactly who can be trusted with a secret anymore? Certainly not the media.
Why is there not more prosecution of those sources if the leaks are so damaging? Or could some of the info be spoon fed misinformation to shake out the bad guys?
Terrorists feed on leaks. Through their investigations into whether the 9/11 attacks resulted from intelligence failure, Congress and the special Commission will learn that important intelligence collection capabilities against Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were lost in the several years preceding September 2001. With the concurrence of NSA, the White House officially released just one of these. As press spokesman Ari Fleischer explained: And let me give you a specific example why, in our democracy and in our open system, it is vital that certain information remain secret. In 1998, for example, as a result of an inappropriate leak of NSA information, it was revealed about NSA being able to listen to Osama bin Laden on his satellite phone. As a result of the disclosure, he stopped using it. As a result of the public disclosure, the United States was denied the opportunity to monitor and gain information that could have been very valuable for protecting our country.7
7. White House press statement, 20 June 2002.
Now the left is going to take what has been established wisdom for years and turn it on its ear. SOBs.
Did you happen to see Fox & Friends this morning? They were despicable. They made the whole story into a big joke, calling it an "urban myth." Yet, I couldn't help but note, even on F&F, that they didn't exactly use facts to debunk the story--just the assertion by "some" people that it wasn't true.
I did see that report on F&F this morning and was pretty ticked about it. There used to be a time when reporters did something called research; now they just let bloggers and freepers do it apparently.
In 1998, the Washington Times revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) could eavesdrop on Osama bin Laden's satellite telephone. No sooner had the story appeared than bin Laden stopped using the telephone, effectively disappearing from the radar screens of US intelligence. This kind of leak has disastrous effects; Michael Scheuer, a twenty-two-year veteran of the CIA who ran the bin Laden desk at that time, recently told a gathering of intelligence officials in Washington that he believes you can draw a direct causal line from the publication of that story to the attacks of September 11.[2]
2 Scheuer was speaking at the first annual National Intelligence Conference, in Arlington, Virginia, on February 8, 2005...
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18001
So seven years later, while briefing a conference hall full of government intel geeks, this "fallacious story" is presented as fact and nobody raises a fuss?? Yeah, right.
Everyone agrees the Wash Times published the information in 1998. F&F asserted thatteh same information was published by Time Magazine in 1996.
That's verifiable, i.e., is more than '"some" people that it [1998 leak was the first leak] wasn't true.'
F&F also went on to sepculate that what might have been leaked wasn't surveillance capability (which any reasonable person transmitting radio signals takes as a given), but was the ability to triangulate location from the transmission. IOW, bin Laden wouldn't stop using a satellite phone just because he can be overheard, but because the use might give away location information.
After the 1998 embassies bombings, bin Laden discovered through a media leak that the United States was monitoring his satellite phone conversations. He abandoned its use and communicated with his followers via his lieutenants.
GREAT find!
The groundwork for libs has been laid.
All data comes from Bush.
Bush lies about the data.
Everything that supports Bush is a lie.
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