posted October 09, 2007 01:43 PM            

Last time, it was the Treason Times, aka, the NY Times.

This time, it's ABC News who caused the shutdown of a terrorist communications network on the Internet which had been penetrated and was being monitored by US Intelligence.

Whomever it was who leaked the information to ABC as well as the chief exectutive and producer of ABC News who broadcast the story should be indicted and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the laws of the United States.

This is the essential essence of giving AID AND COMFORT to an enemy and there is no protection under the 1st Amendment or any other for doing so.

Alerting Bin Laden's Compatriots (ABC): Al Qaeda Goes Dark Thanks to Network
By Ken Shepherd | October 9, 2007 - 11:48 ET

The New York Sun's Eli Lake is reporting this morning that "Al Qaeda's Internet communications system has suddenly gone dark to American intelligence" following "the leak of Osama bin Laden's September 11 speech inadvertently disclosed the fact that" American intelligence agencies "had penetrated the enemy's system."

You can thank ABC News for that. According to Lake:

...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.

Lake went on to quote an anonymous intelligence officer lamenting that "We lost an important keyhole into the enemy."

Townhall's Hugh Hewitt goes further, attacking the leakers for a "An Astonishing and Sickening Breach of Trust," wondering, "What will it take for people to realize that it is a war, not a game or a campaign?"

Of course it's not just the leaker but the leakee that has moral culpability for potential lives lost due to the intelligence failures that may result here. But then again, is it that surprising coming from ABC, a network whose news chief once famously waxed agnostice over whether the Pentagon was a legitimate military target for our enemies. David Westin did eventually apologize, although Westin didn't exactly become a "patriot first, journalist second." After all, ABC policy still frowns on the U.S. flag pin as an unnecessary and suspect sartorial accessory.

As my colleague Scott Whitlock noted on October 5:

On Friday's "Good Morning America," ABC reporter David Wright narrated a sympathetic look at Barack Obama's decision not to wear an American flag lapel pin and asserted that this country's "obsession with flag pins is relatively new." To further defend the Democratic presidential candidate, Wright pointedly noted that liberal bogeyman Richard Nixon wore such a pin. He observed, "Ike didn't wear one. JFK either. Nixon did wear the flag as he told the American people he had nothing to do with Watergate."

posted October 09, 2007 01:46 PM            

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.

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."

By Friday evening, one of the key sets of sites in the Obelisk network, the Ekhlaas forum, was back on line. The Ekhlaas forum is a password-protected message board used by Qaeda for recruitment, propaganda dissemination, and as one of the entrance ways into Obelisk for those operatives whose user names are granted permission. Many of the other Obelisk sites are now offline and presumably moved to new secret locations on the World Wide Web.

The founder of a Web site known as clandestineradio.com, Nick Grace, tracked the shutdown of Qaeda's Obelisk system in real time. "It was both unprecedented and chilling from the perspective of a Web techie. The discipline and coordination to take the entire system down involving multiple Web servers, hundreds of user names and passwords, is an astounding feat, especially that it was done within minutes," Mr. Grace said yesterday.

The head of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors Jihadi Web sites and provides information to subscribers, Rita Katz, said she personally provided the video on September 7 to the deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter.

Ms. Katz yesterday said, "We shared a copy of the transcript and the video with the U.S. government, to Michael Leiter, with the request specifically that it was important to keep the subject secret. Then the video was leaked out. An investigation into who downloaded the video from our server indicated that several computers with IP addresses were registered to government agencies."

Yesterday a spokesman for the National Counterterrorism Center, Carl Kropf, denied the accusation that it was responsible for the leak. "That's just absolutely wrong. The allegation and the accusation that we did that is unfounded," he said. The spokesman for the director of national intelligence, Ross Feinstein, yesterday also denied the leak allegation. "The intelligence community and the ODNI senior leadership did not leak this video to the media," he said.

Ms. Katz said, "The government leak damaged our investigation into Al Qaeda's network. Techniques and sources that took years to develop became ineffective. As a result of the leak Al Qaeda changed their methods." Ms. Katz said she also lost potential revenue.

A former counterterrorism official, Roger Cressey, said, "If any of this was leaked for any reasons, especially political, that is just unconscionable." Mr. Cressey added that the work that was lost by burrowing into Qaeda's Internet system was far more valuable than any benefit that was gained by short-circuiting Osama bin Laden's video to the public.

While Al Qaeda still uses human couriers to move its most important messages between senior leaders and what is known as a Hawala network of lenders throughout the world to move interest-free money, more and more of the organization's communication happens in cyber space.

posted October 09, 2007 04:50 PM            

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."

The SITE Intelligence Group said it lost access that it had covertly acquired to Al-Qaeda's communications network when the administration of President George W. Bush let out that the company had obtained a bin Laden video early last month ahead of its official release, the Washington Post said.

"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," SITE founder Rita Katz told the newspaper.

SITE monitors websites and public communications linked to radical Islamist groups and organizations deemed terrorist by US authorities and provides the information to clients, including news media companies.

It got hold of the bin Laden video before its release and provided it for free to the White House on the morning of September 7 but insisted that the video's existence remain secret until it spotted the official release, in order to protect its own work.

"Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's website," the Post said.

By that afternoon the video and a transcript from it had been leaked to a cable television news network and broadcast worldwide, the Post reported.

According to Katz, this tipped off Al-Qaeda that its communications security had been breached by SITE.

White House officials said the matter would be referred to the Director of National Intelligence, and that the White House was not planning any internal investigation.

"When the White House receives information from an individual or a company, we refer that appropriately to the intelligence community. That's what happened here," Perino said.

"And I'll have to refer you to the Director on National Intelligence for any process problem they had in that regard."

Homeland security adviser Fran Townsend echoed Perino's "concern" and referred the matter to the nation's spy chief.

"This is going to be an issue for the DNI to look at so that we can understand what, if anything, happened, and how to deal with it to ensure that we fully protect those who cooperate with us," Townsend said.

"I haven't looked at the internal White House emails, so what I can tell you is the DNI and the Intelligence Committee will need to look at who had access to it.

She added: "We are only going to be successful in the war on terror with the help of the American people."

The video appeared to be timed to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, and was bin Laden's first video appearance since October 2004.

In it, the elusive Al-Qaeda chief mocked the United States as "weak" and vowed to escalate fighting in Iraq.

Another US-based organization that monitors Islamic militant websites, IntelCenter, said its "sources, methods and techniques ... to collect terrorist video material remain intact," according to CEO Ben Venzke, who added that the focus on rushing videos to the public could have dangerous consequences.

"Simply getting the video first but not having the professional knowledge and responsibilities to know what to do with it can not only result in the loss of valuable intelligence but it can actually harm ongoing activities within the official counterterrorism community," he said.

posted October 11, 2007 02:45 PM            

A flag pin would surely tell everyone they're on America's side...and not the side of the enemy whose every word of propaganda is picked up by so called journalists and spread around the world.

posted October 12, 2007 12:25 PM            

I'm not surprised these as$es refuse to wear a flag pin..or they've had orders from headquarters not to do so.

posted April 28, 2008 12:17 PM            

The results are that Americans don't trust the major news media, are not listening to them and many have stopped buying their publications. All this contributes to their advertisers deserting them which sends their revenues on a downward spiral.

In all America, there is no group who more deserves what they are now getting.

A "free press" YES, but a lying treasonous press...goodbye and good riddance.

Average weekday circulation at the top 20 US newspapers
By The Associated Press

Average paid weekday circulation of the nation's 20 largest newspapers for the six-month period ending in March, as reported Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percentage changes are from the comparable year-ago period.

1. USA Today, 2,284,219, up 0.3 percent

2. The Wall Street Journal, 2,069,463, up 0.4 percent

3. The New York Times, 1,077,256, down 3.9 percent

4. Los Angeles Times, 773,884, down 5.1 percent

5. New York Daily News, 703,137, down 2.1 percent

6. New York Post, 702,488, down 3.1 percent

7. The Washington Post, 673,180, down 3.6 percent

8. Chicago Tribune, 541,663, down 4.4 percent

9. Houston Chronicle, 494,131, down 1.8 percent

10. The Arizona Republic, 413,332, down 4.7 percent

11. Newsday, Long Island, 379,613, down 4.7 percent

12. San Francisco Chronicle, 370,345, down 4.2 percent

13. Dallas Morning News, 368,313, down 10.6 percent

14. The Boston Globe, 350,605, down 8.3 percent

15. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., 345,130, down 7.4 percent

16. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 334,150, down 5.1 percent

17. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, 330,280, down 4.2 percent

18. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 326,907, down 8.5 percent

19. Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 321,984, down 6.7 percent

20. St. Petersburg Times, Florida, 316,007, down 2.1 percent