[Infowarrior] - Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets

[Richard Forno]

I can relate to the SITE issue here --- I've seen similar situations
firsthand (also at the White House) where valuable resources got burned
which in turn botched up otherwise-reliable USG operations simply because
the USG thought they had all the answers and were the best at what they
did....with such institutional hubris, everybody loses and after a while you
get tired of playing......rf


------ Forwarded Message
Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets

Firm Says Administration's Handling of Video Ruined Its Spying Efforts
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801
817_pf.html

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 9, 2007; A01

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups
obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last
month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of
its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition
that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it
from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a
transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush
administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature
disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long
surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along
secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the
terrorist group's communications network.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,"
said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder, who has garnered wide
attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and
Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's
methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide
range of paying clients, including private firms and military and
intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials
declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they
did not challenge Katz's version of events. They also said the incident had
no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the
government's ability to anticipate attacks.

While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S.
agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web.
"We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues,
across all 16 intelligence agencies," said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But privately, some intelligence officials called the incident regrettable,
and one official said SITE had been "tremendously helpful" in ferreting out
al-Qaeda secrets over time.

The al-Qaeda video aired on Sept. 7 attracted international attention as the
first new video message from the group's leader in three years. In it, a
dark-bearded bin Laden urges Americans to convert to Islam and predicts
failure for the Bush administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. The video was
aired on hundreds of Western news Web sites nearly a full day before its
release by a distribution company linked to al-Qaeda.

Computer logs and records reviewed by The Washington Post support SITE's
claim that it snatched the video from al-Qaeda days beforehand. Katz
requested that the precise date and details of the acquisition not be made
public, saying such disclosures could reveal sensitive details about the
company's methods.

SITE -- an acronym for the Search for International Terrorist Entities --
was established in 2002 with the stated goal of tracking and exposing
terrorist groups, according to the company's Web site. Katz, an Iraqi-born
Israeli citizen whose father was executed by Saddam Hussein in the 1960s,
has made the investigation of terrorist groups a passionate quest.

"We were able to establish sources that provided us with unique and
important information into al-Qaeda's hidden world," Katz said. Her
company's income is drawn from subscriber fees and contracts.

Katz said she decided to offer an advance copy of the bin Laden video to the
White House without charge so officials there could prepare for its eventual
release.

She spoke first with White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, whom she had
previously met, and then with Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president
for homeland security. Both expressed interest in obtaining a copy, and
Bagnal suggested that she send a copy to Michael Leiter, who holds the No. 2
job at the National Counterterrorism Center.

Administration and intelligence officials would not comment on whether they
had obtained the video separately. Katz said Fielding and Bagnal made it
clear to her that the White House did not possess a copy at the time she
offered hers.

Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with
a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English
transcript. "Please understand the necessity for secrecy," Katz wrote in her
e-mail. "We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our
investigations."

Fielding replied with an e-mail expressing gratitude to Katz. "It is you who
deserves the thanks," he wrote, according to a copy of the message. There
was no record of a response from Leiter or the national intelligence
director's office.

Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz's e-mail
to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the
video from SITE's server, according to a log of file transfers. The records
show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with
addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies.

By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies
of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News's Web site
referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the
group. "This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak
of this document," Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.

Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network,
put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it
had obtained in the past, according to Katz.

A small number of private intelligence companies compete with SITE in
scouring terrorists' networks for information and messages, and some have
questioned the company's motives and methods, including the claim that its
access to al-Qaeda's network was unique. One competitor, Ben Venzke, founder
of IntelCenter, said he questions SITE's decision -- as described by Katz --
to offer the video to White House policymakers rather than quietly share it
with intelligence analysts.

"It is not just about getting the video first," Venzke said. "It is about
having the proper methods and procedures in place to make sure that the
appropriate intelligence gets to where it needs to go in the intelligence
community and elsewhere in order to support ongoing counterterrorism
operations."