South Carolina PingAdd me to the list. / Remove me from the list.
Posted on 09/20/2007 8:56:59 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
WASHINGTON - Once her son is off to school, Laura Mansfield settles in at her dining room table with her laptop and begins trolling Arabic-language message boards and chat rooms popular with jihadists.
Fluent in Arabic, the self-employed terror analyst often hacks into the sites, translates the material, puts it together and sends her analysis via a subscription service to intelligence agencies, law enforcement and academics.
Occasionally she comes across a gem, such as when she found a recent Osama bin Laden video — before al-Qaida had announced it.
"I realized, oh my gosh, I'm sitting here, I'm a fat 50-year-old mom and I've managed to scoop al-Qaida," said Mansfield, who uses that name as a pseudonym because she receives death threats.
She sometimes spends 100 hours a week online, and she often finds items after word has begun spreading on the Arabic forums of an imminent release.
"It's really important to understand what the jihadists think and how they're planning on doing things," she said. "They're very vocal. They tell us what they're going to do and then they go out and do it."
Mansfield tips off her intelligence sources when she does find something new, part of an informal working relationship with the government.
"When I send them something, it's welcome," she said. "They thank me."
There have been times when an impending video release has kept her from a planned shopping trip with her daughter.
"It gets really challenging when you're trying to do that and cook spaghetti at the same time," she said.
Maybe give her some protection too — somebody she can train to keep an eye on things while she tends to her kids, and somebody to cover her back.
bump
Hey! Don’t underestimate us fat, 50-ish moms. We’re fairly formidible.
Maybe she shouldn’t be blabbing to AP about what she is doing. Not real smart to putting her name and approximate location - and the fact that she has kids in an online searchable news story.
Unless it is a PsyOp to mess with the small minds of the jihadies. Osama got 0wned by a housewife! LOL
And I know she is demonstrably more than capable of whacking someone at 300+M with my .308.
You just do not want to mess with a MOM!
Oh, and thank you, sir, for your son’s service and your family’s sacrifice for my safety.
PS Marine’s make me go weak in the knees.
So she found the video. Kudos to her
You seem to be under the illusion that the government is here to serve and protect us. BTW, she’s not the only stay-at-home mom scooping our government agencies; there’s another one in Montana who got some of them convicted and suffered as a result.
Hey! I resemble that remark.
Have you ever seen even one govt employee who really works like a private person??
SWEET news!!
It makes it easier to accept paying 30% of my income to them.
50 Grand??? Try a minimum of a couple a hundred grand!
Better yet, the $50 K, and a high speed security protecteed,internet connection, so that she can
remain at home with her family without fear of being backtraced.
I’m all for reducing the federal pay rate of all intel folks to whatever this old lady makes. If she can do it, on whatever budget she has, so can they.
Well, she is using a pseudonym, and Washington isn’t necessarily anywhere near where she lives.
Good for her, I say!
I trust her more than the Conservative hating CIA and State Department.
OLD LADY? At 50? You’ll regret that someday. But anyway, Laura was the main contibutor to North East Intelligence Agency, which was a sore spot for Islamists a few years ago. She’s been to mosques in the US and reported that they were radical. Is she fat? Only because she says so, but anyone in America can say that, right?
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