Politics First
CBS reports that the same people who destroyed our ability to monitor Iran’s nuclear program by outing Valerie Plame have destroyed another program by leaking: Report: White House Ruins Terrorist Intel
(CBS) A small, privately run intelligence analysis company says that a Bush administration leak has ruined years of clandestine work to find and exploit al Qaeda secrets on the Internet, the Washington Post reports.
SITE Institute, one of many private companies that troll extremist Web content and use secret methods to find unreleased material and release it early, against the wishes of the militants creating it, was the first to obtain an Osama bin Laden video last month.
According to the report, Rita Katz, who runs SITE, told The Post she turned the video over to the White House on the condition that it not be made public until the material was released on line by al Qaeda’s own media wing.
Katz told The Post that by the afternoon of Sept. 7, the day she turned the video over to White House officials, it had been leaked and was appearing on myriad news Web sites and television networks around the world.
SITE claims the White House leak – the source of which had not been confirmed, according to the report – tipped al Qaeda off to the glitch that had been exploited for years by the company, rendering the practice useless for future intelligence gathering.
“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” Katz told The Post.
They just do not understand the concept of security and destroy years worth of work for political advantage. They do this constantly. SITE did the work; the Hedgemony took the credit and destroyed another intelligence source. They destroyed years of work for a headline. They are constantly leaking sources and methods, the most valuable assets any intelligence operation has.
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OT, Bryan, but interestingly LeftLeaningLady is having Tricare problems. See comments here.
It’s definitely a new one on me….have you heard of anything like this?
OT: it has to be, as you suggest, something to do with the contractor administrating the program, because I’ve never known Tricare not to be accepted.
Back on topic… Bryan, when I read of this incident, I immediately thought of you and Fallenmonk, and indeed both of you obliged me with posts on the subject much better focused than anything I could have written. Thank you.
I understand that SITE does its work for its own purposes, but frankly, the Bushists do not deserve the help of SITE. I’m sure SITE now realizes that, and either will not help the U.S. government again (our loss), or at least will avoid the political apparatus like the plague from now on. That’s IF SITE survives this incident, which is no certainty, from what I’ve read.
If they want to stay in “the Game” they have to pass things on, but you don’t expect your own government to do you in as a favor for Faux News. That the White House is feeding scoops to Fox in exchange for favorable coverage is becoming more obvious.
I’ve seen some comment that the Hedgemony seems to blow up every serious lead to Osama. I don’t think it’s planned, I think they’re incompetent.
People pay serious money for what SITE produces, and I don’t doubt that some of the anger expressed by SITE was probably due to people asking why they should pay for things that have already been on the news.
Considering that their entire rationale for why the Gitmo detainees and other terrrrrrr suspects can’t be allowed to go to trial in the federal court system is that doing so would reveal intelligence gathering methods, it would appear that the Shrubbery is–yet again–suffering from self-referential incoherence. If any of them had any sense of shame, they’d be too embarrassed to show their faces in public again. Given that it’s the Shrubbery, I’m sure they’ll be out spilling secrets again in no time–as long as doing so suits their purposes at that particular moment in time.
I’m sure they’ll try to find some way to blame the leak on a Democrat. Or the Clenis.
It’s always possible that someone at Fox is reading the White House’s e-mail because fo the major security lapses that have occurred in the White House. I don’t doubt that a number of people have their account and password information on a Post-It on their screens.
I’m not that obvious about it. But with the number of sites (a) requiring passwords these days and (b) insisting that you change them to something unique (i.e., no recycling) every three months or so, it’s getting to the point where I almost have to have a list of them written down somewhere, simply to remember what the current one happens to be. I can save them in my browser on my laptop, but then what do I do if I need to access that site from a different computer, or if my laptop dies or (as recently happened) if I have to change the password and can’t remember what the current one is?
You end up having to do it, but you shouldn’t make it too obvious or store it in your rolodex under passwords.
i keep everything on post-it notes on my monitor. you’d have to shuffle through them all for hours to find the ones with the passwords written on them.
…and you wonder that geeks aren’t appreciative of your techniques.
🙄 pick a number
So I assumed 😈