Free Republic

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...

Early yesterday morning, a South Carolina Web designer who works at home managed to scoop al-Qaeda by publicly unveiling its new video, a feat she has accomplished numerous times since 2002. Within hours, cable news stations were broadcasting images of Osama bin Laden commemorating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and crediting the 50-year-old woman, who uses the pseudonym Laura Mansfield. The bin Laden video that surfaced Friday was promoted on several Islamic Web sites in messages posted by al-Sahab, a group that produces some of al-Qaeda's propaganda videos. U.S. officials now believe the video was intended for release on...

The controversial Czech TV documentary “I, A Muslim,” in which a reporter used a hidden camera to record inside mosques, has been posted (with English subtitles) at Google Video by LGF reader “Abu Kafir:” I, a Muslim

On April 29th, 2006, America's Truth Forum presented a symposium titled, The Underlying Roots Of Terrorism: Terrorism's Threat to World Peace & National Security at the Doubletree Hotel Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia. These are notes taken at the event by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler. Jeff Epstein, President of America’s Truth Forum, began by thanking the veterans in the room and noting the work of Frank Salvato, editor of The New Media Journal, who runs America’s Truth Forum web site and produces the group’s Terrorism Update Newsletter. Epstein said that the Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has interviewed Osama Bin...

(snip) We spoke to counterterrorism expert Laura Mansfield earlier today. She's someone that specializes in jihadi activity and how things travel around on Islamic Web sites. She says she first picked it up on a Web forum hosted in the United Kingdom earlier today. Soon it was appearing on other Islamic Web sites. This video is a huge file, and large files like this can overwhelm the primary sites that first link to them and post them online. So, what we are seeing is this video cropping up and being passed around on Web sites and file-sharing services that can...

It’s been two years since I first locked horns with a cyber jihadi by the name of Terrorist 007. I was working as the assistant director for the Northeast Intelligence Network (NEIN) and a writer for World Net Daily when I ran into Terrorist 007, or Irhabi 007, on the old Ansar forum, an Arabic language message board frequently used by Al Qaeda sympathizers. Irhabi 007 was bragging about his hacking abilities, in an attempt to weasel his way into the “in crowd” of vetted jihadis. Over the next few months, I watched as Terrorist 007 began to establish himself...

<p>For almost two years, intelligence services around the world tried to uncover the identity of an Internet hacker who had become a key conduit for al-Qaeda. The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007. He hacked into American university computers, propagandized for the Iraq insurgents led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and taught other online jihadists how to wield their computers for the cause.</p>

March 17, 2006: Declassified documents from Iraq show 3,000 Saudi and Iraqi mujihideen depart Iraq in Nov 2001 to fight US in Afghanistan The newly declassified documents shed more and more light on the evolution of the violent insurgency in Iraq, and show that Saddam Hussein’s government was aware not just of the presence of Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Mus’ab Al Zarqawi, but also was aware that the Anbar province in Iraq was being used as a launch point for organized groups of jihadis headed to fight the United States in Afghanistan. The document, addressed to the Security Board, Fedayeen...

March 17, 2006: Documents confirm Saddam Hussein government knew Zarqawi headed Al Qaeda cell in Iraq in August 2002 Documents released Thursday by the US government show that less than a year after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Saddam Hussein’s government had identified at least one active Al Qaeda cell in his country. Among the Iraqi documents collected by U.S. intelligence during the Iraq war amd released Thursday is a document, released only in Arabic, which the US government describes as follows: 2002 Iraqi Intelligence Correspondence concerning the presence of al-Qaida Members in Iraq. Correspondence between...

Indicates regime was cooperating with bin Laden group to strike U.S. Saddam Hussein on Iraqi TV prior to the war Among the pre-war documents posted online yesterday by the Pentagon is a letter from a member of Saddam's intelligence apparatus indicating al-Qaida and the Taliban had a relationship with the regime prior to the 9-11 attacks. The letter by the member of Saddam's Al Mukabarat to a superior, dated Sept. 15, 2001, reports a pre-9/11 conversation between an Iraqi intelligence source and a Taliban Afghani consul. The documents were released yesterday at the direction of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte....

Hate sites for Palestinian children - for 3 1/2 years! By Laura Mansfield When CNN contacted me this morning about the reports of a "new" Palestinian kids online magazine, I sent them the information I have collected over the past few years as I have monitored this website and numerous other Arabic language websites. The results of the interview were aired this evening on CNN during Wolf Blitzer's prime time show, The Situation Room. The following is an excerpt from CNN's transcript of The Situation Room located here: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0603/08/sitroom.02.html . BLITZER: Today, there are some troubling reports of a Hamas-endorsed...

Excerpt from Laura Mansfield just released book. She is also, our own, freeper, StillProud2befree Inshallah: My journey into the world of Islam, and my escape Laura's newest book - JUST RELEASED The Beginning A cacophony of sounds wrenched me from a sound sleep into that semi coherent state between sleep and wakefulness. The disorientation was brief. It was my first morning in Cairo, Egypt, and although I knew I was embarking on an adventure, I had no clue of the dark twists that my trek would take me on, deep into the bowels of Islamic fundamentalism. I didn’t realize that...

No surprises in this article, but in case you've heard the rumor that Iran and its president are backpedalling from their calls for the destruction of Israel and the US - well, that's just a rumor. From today's Iranian press: Iranian Daily Calls For World Without Zionism, 'Satanic' US Administration "World without Zionism and the great Satan" Keyhan International Tuesday, November 1, 2005 President Ahmadinezhad's extremely thoughtful and realistic remarks in preparing the mindset of not just the Iranians but of the Muslim ummah and the rest of the contemporary world for the fast approaching eventuality of the world without...

Let’s imagine for a moment that you are a manager of a car dealership in Anytown, USA. Your salespeople get paid a generous base salary, commission on the sales of each car, and are provided with a car as a perk. You have a salesman named Joe who has been working for you for years. Over the years, you have stuck with Joe through good times and back. When the auto industry slumped, and other salespeople jumped ship and went to work in more lucrative careers, Joe stayed with the company. When Joe had serious sales slumps because of his...

CBS/Infinity Radio has refused to air paid commercial announcements for an upcoming non-partisan symposium on terrorism, claiming "people might be too emotionally affected" by it. The People’s Truth Forum, which is sponsoring the symposium titled The Radical-Islamist Threat to World Peace and National Security to be held in Connecticut on Sept. 21, was rebuffed by CBS/Infinity Radio when the PTF’s president, Jeffrey Epstein, tried to purchase commercial time to publicize the event. The official statement from CBS/Infinity Radio said, "Too many people might be emotionally affected by the subject matter. … It's too controversial to be aired at this time."...

Though his attorneys claim he's harmless, Virginia resident Ismail Selim Elbarasse, now in federal custody, for years has been tied to stateside financing of Middle East terrorist organization Hamas. The Annandale, Va., resident was taken into custody Friday after two off-duty Baltimore County police officers saw him videotaping the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from a sport utility vehicle, said Marcia Murphy, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore. Elbarasse was not charged with a crime but was detained on a material witness warrant issued by the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago. Officials there want him to testify before a...

<p>An Internet computer server operated by an Arkansas government agency was transformed last weekend into the online home of dozens of videos featuring Osama bin Laden, Islamic jihadist anthems and terrorist speeches.</p> <p>State government officials removed the files from a computer operated by the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department shortly after they were discovered, a government spokesman said. The case highlights an increasing trend of hackers hijacking vulnerable Web servers for the purpose of advocating radical political and terrorist ideologies.</p>