Site Institute - Leak Destroys al-Qaeda Surveillance Operation
October 8, 2007
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For quite some time many organizations and media outlets including The National Terror Alert Response Center have depended upon the SITE Institute and it’s resources for advanced notice of al Qaeda activities and media releases. The SITE Institute has been the primary source for a number of videos, bulletins and warnings from Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders.
Unfortunately that may have come to an end.
A recently leaked video has alerted al Qaeda to a security breach, compromising the program.
From MNSBC.com
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.
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From The New York Sun
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. This network of Web sites serves not only as the distribution system for the videos produced by Al Qaeda’s production company, As-Sahab, but also as the equivalent of a corporate intranet, dealing with such mundane matters as expense reporting and clerical memos to mid- and lower-level Qaeda operatives throughout the world.
SITE Institute has been a valued partner in the fight against global terrorism. If you’re not familiar with their work, below is a brief excerpt and link to their site.
“Studying the primary source propaganda, training manuals, and chatter of terrorists offers insight into terrorists and their activities that can not be obtained anywhere else. Failing to monitor terrorist propaganda is a failure in intelligence. To fulfill this need, the SITE Intelligence Group offers its Monitoring Service, which provides numerous daily translations of terrorist propaganda and multimedia from primary source terrorist websites.
By monitoring terrorist and extremist websites and penetrating password-protected Al Qaeda linked sites, SITE provides a state-of-the-art intelligence service to both practitioners and analysts to understand the adversary.”
The Search For International Terrorists Entities
UPDATE: The White House on Tuesday denied being the source of a leak involving an Osama bin Laden video that a private intelligence firm said had sabotaged its secret ability to intercept Al-Qaeda messages.
Asked if the White House was the source of the leak, spokeswoman Dana Perino said: “No, we were not … We were very concerned to learn about it.”
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5 Responses to “Site Institute - Leak Destroys al-Qaeda Surveillance Operation”
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There’s a word for this…..Treason. ABC’s CEO should be arrested at once.
Does anyone remember what it means to be loyal to ones own country? Why aren’t those people that, when discovered to have leaked classified and or sensitive information prosecuted? Perhaps one or two executions would greatly reduce this activity!
Echoes of Soros: “Waalll, someone else would have caused all that death/impoverishment/destruction if I/we didn’t, so I/we feel no guilt or responsibility whatsoever. It’s all good!”
That’s a rough paraphrase, of course.
:-p
Maybe the American public - the ones who care - should start an all out assault on congressional and senate phone lines, a la Mark Levin. It worked for the first round of the immigration issue. The media doesn’t seem to care who it damages, just that they get the story out first. The “Journalists” who work for these outlets are taught that if you want to survive in the business, you have to be first and be cutting edge. In their drive to make a name for themselves they damage not only national security but they ruin lives of many. When they are brought to task on their errors, they start yelling “First amendment!”…funny, I never interpreted the first amendment to mean leeway for anyone to say anything they want, and it doesn’t exempt from libel or treason.
I agree with Jeff. It’s time we start using the constitution to our advantage for a change instead of letting the media and it flankmen (ACLU in particular) bully the majority of citizens around.
now watching Burn’s War PBS, pride then - money now,
Need a strong leader
War is won in the will