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?
It was after.
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.