Posted on 10/09/2007 2:21:58 AM PDT by jsh3180
WASHINGTON — Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence after the leak of Osama bin Laden's September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that we had penetrated the enemy's system.
The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden's first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech.
But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda's internal security division that the organization's Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised. While intranets are usually based on servers in a discrete physical location, Obelisk is a series of sites all over the Web, often with fake names, in some cases sites that are not even known by their proprietors to have been hacked by Al Qaeda.
One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the shutdown of the Obelisk system. America's Obelisk watchers even saw the order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda's internal security to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal message America's intelligence community saw. "We saw the whole thing shut down because of this leak," the official said. "We lost an important keyhole into the enemy."
(Excerpt) Read more at nysun.com ...
On second thought, maybe the intention was to get AQ to dump their old servers and go with newer machines running Vista.
It would kill the media for President Bush to get the credit for killing/capturing Osama bin Loser.
They cannot allow that to happen.
One of the biggest mistakes Bush made was not to immmediately fire all the Clinton cronies at the CIA. This should have been done on his first full day in office.
Damn ABC but also consider that they found out about it from our own people. Somewhere there is a government employee more interested in a little bit of cash or the fleeting fame of leaking something to the press. There’s equal culpability and I wish very bad things for both.
That may be true, but there should still be some sense of responsibility on the part of the media to keep the lid on things.
Only when it advances their cause, i.e., the defeat of America, the election of Hillery, enactment of a full Marxist Socialist system, etc......
ABC?
It was intentional.
There are no innocent Americans! </ABC>
If it bleeds, it leads</ABC>
Who leaked the info to ABC? That’s somebody who needs to be tried for treason. Then executed.
That would get everybody’s attention.
Keep your friends close and your (potential) enemies closer!
If Bergular ever decides to talk or to write a book, the damage to the Klintoons will be incalculable.
On the subject of this thread, I believe that this is one of those leaking-a-leak with a purpose. Time will tell.
Does anyone have a time line on the date the new AQ video was publicly announced and the date AQ released it themselves?
From your link it appears that terrorist cyber sleuth ‘Laura Mansfield’ made the following quote, released on on 9/20/07:
“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.
Did she say this before or after the story broke?
” Funny, you read the headline and first paragraph you think it was an intelligence snafu; you get to the second paragraph, though, and it appears it was the media rushing the material out that ruined the operation. “
What upsets me is not so much ABC letting it slip, but WHO gave it to ABC.
It had to be leaked to them by our intelligence before they could leak it to the world.
I am not sure how ABC got it but it would appear cable TV got it first. See this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801817_2.html?hpid=topnews
Granted the leak is damaging...but if SITE and Laurie Mansfield and heck.... even I figured out we were inside AQ's OODA loop and reading them real time....then AQ knew it also.
It was after.
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