The leak that resulted in the US and UK pulling non-essential personnel from Yemen was a two-stage affair. Initially someone in the Obama administration leaked to the New York Times that the alert was the result of a high-level conversation among al Qaeda leaders.

McClatchy, who still has foreign correspondents, contacted Yemeni officials, and seeing that the White House was talking about it, one of them gave McClatchy the names of the people involved.

McClatchy reports that Yemen is annoyed with the US:

SANAA, Yemen — Yemeni officials on Tuesday sharply denounced the United States’ decision to evacuate some of its staff from its embassy in the country in the first sign of a split between allies over the Obama administration’s reaction to what U.S. officials say is one of the most specific terrorism threats in years.
…

The closures were triggered, a Yemeni official told McClatchy on Sunday, by an intercepted message between the head of al Qaida, Ayman al Zawahiri, and the head of al Qaida’s Yemen-based affiliate, Nasir al Wuhayshi, in which Zawahiri issued a clear order for Wuhayshi to launch an attack.

This revelation is so bad that even John McCain and Lindsey Graham have figured out it was bad.

If, after Obama leaves office, Edward Snowden decides to return to the US for trial, this incident will be cited by his defense team. You have to go back to Ronald Reagan for leaks this bad.

I just saw an ad on a web site that indicates that my DSL provider, CenturyLINK, call their bundle of phone, TV, and ‘Net access, PRISM. Ah, guys, you might want to read the news and consider changing that name. I guess you could consider it a bit of corporate honesty, telling consumers what they are going to do with their data up front, but I doubt it.

The Beeb, along with the rest of the media, reports that Jeff Bezos, not Amazon, bought the Washington Post for $250 million, under 1% of his net worth.

If he would like to make some money, not that he needs to, he should start hiring some reporters to actually report the news, not the Village Conventional Wisdom, and fire most of the overpaid columnists on the paper’s editorial page who have been consistently wrong. People will pay to read the truth, and pundits who are right about what’s going on in the world.

Going digital won’t save a newspaper that no one wants to read. Fact checking, and the truth will make it worth reading, and worth paying for. You need reporters for that.

The Beeb also reports that the Bank of America is being sued by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission for selling mortgage securities that it knew, or should have known, were bogus.

The Bank says the securities would have been fine if the housing market hadn’t crashed … [because of all the bogus securities that banks were selling].

No matter what the fine, BoA will get it back, probably by increasing fees on payday or food stamp debit cards, because that’s what they do.

Things Happen:

• 1538 – Bogotá, Colombia, is founded by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada.
• 1777 – Revolutionary War: Battle of Oriskany.
• 1890 – At Auburn Prison in New York, murderer William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed by electric chair.
• 1909 – Alice Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip.
• 1923 – Henry Sullivan swims the English Channel.
• 1926 – Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim across the English Channel.
• 1945 – World War II: Hiroshima is devastated when an atomic bomb, “Little Boy”, is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 90,000 people were killed instantly.
• 1960 – Cuban Revolution: In response to a United States embargo, Cuba nationalizes American and foreign-owned property in the nation.
• 1965 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into United States law.
• 1991 – Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web.
• 2001 – White House briefing entitled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. delivered to George W. Bush. This document foreshadowed the September 11, 2001 attacks.

People Are Born:

• 1809 – Alfred Lord Tennyson, English poet (d. 1892)
• 1861 – Edith Roosevelt, American First Lady of the United States (d. 1948)
• 1881 – Leo Carrillo, American actor (d. 1961)
• 1881 – Alexander Fleming, Scottish scientist, Nobel laureate (d. 1955)
• 1881 – Louella Parsons, American gossip columnist (d. 1972)
• 1891 – William Slim, British general (d. 1970)
• 1892 – Hoot Gibson, American actor (d. 1962)
• 1902 – Dutch Schultz, American bootlegger (d. 1935)
• 1908 – Will Lee, American actor (d. 1982)
• 1911 – Lucille Ball, American actress (d. 1989)
• 1917 – Robert Mitchum, American actor (d. 1997)
• 1928 – Andy Warhol, American artist (d. 1987)
• 1934 – Piers Anthony, English writer
• 1943 – Jon Postel, American computer scientist (d. 1998)

In Later Years Others Are Born:

• Steve Bates
• NTodd