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 ...
” Wasn’t it Orin Hatch who, shortly after the 9-11-01 attacks, proudly announced in a news interview that the US was tracking bin Laden via his cellphone? “
On 9-12-01, President Bush announced that Congress would no longer have access to classified information....
Had he not knuckled under to the subsequent sqwawk (his first surrender of power to the punditocracy), we might be living in a much different world, now....
I hadn’t thought of that. Good point.
I don’t have an exact timeline, I don’t think anyone but those actually involved in the hacking, and their supervisors actually know the entire timeline regarding the newest (fake) Bin Laden tape. Mansfield probably “found” it at least 4 days, and probably not more than a week before it was made “public” to Arabic language media networks.
>>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.<<
Someone had to rush it to the media. That person should pay severe consequences.
Bingo.
...and some inteligence pencil pusher with his/her own agenda who did the leak.
The state department is FILLED with anti-PresidentBush sympathyzers.
And ABC rejoices.
ABC should go dark. The military should shut it down, seize all their facilities and assets until we know who is responsible. When we determine who that is, then they should try the responsible parties for treason.
We should. But we won't.
Obviously the US does not really want to win the war on terror. We are simply not serious enough about it.
It seems that “loose lips STILL sink ships”! Whoever leaked the info to the mass media BLABBERMOUTHS needs to be turned over to the al-Qaeda for a taste of Shari’a law regarding blabbermouths!!
Loose lips sink ships !
sad but true.
Can you believe it?
LOL
I was really wonder this too -
ABC wouldn’t have access, directly, to this info - it would have to come from US Intelligence. Now, I can believe that some leftwinger/progressive might work for US intel and let it leak to ABC.
At this point, I don’t think ABC is to blame. They wouldn’t know any better, unless there was some collaboration between their guys and the leftwinger in the intel dept.
Three guesses as to who this "officer" voted for in the last election, and the first two don't count.
Go after Scooter Libby?
Well, I’m confused reading the different accounts.
Eli Lake at the Sun made it sound as though the Feds found it, and now it seems the Feds were tipped off about it by Mansfield.
“figured out we were inside AQ’s OODA loop and reading them real time....then AQ knew it also.”
Hard to say. If that’s true, why did things go dark? Maybe this was a test by alQaeda to see if anyone would pick it up?
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