Firm says Bush administration’s handling of video ruined its spying efforts
Remember back when the Administration "foiled" a terrorist plot in England and later we were to learn that the premature exposing of that plot, although perfect timing just before the '06 elections, blew the cover too quickly and made it so conviction of those involved became impossible. Well they have done it again but this time they blew catching Osama Bin Laudin. Follow me to learn about how this administration values scaring the American people MORE that actually stopping the war on terror.
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.
And to top it all off guess ... just guess where the administration sent the tape. That's right to our old flag lapel wearing patriots at FOX News!
Even though the company founder warned:
"Please understand the necessity for secrecy," Katz wrote in her e-mail. "We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations."
They went straight to FOX
... 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,"
Read all about how our Government is more interested in whipping up fear to continue their world wide war than they are in actually finding and eliminating the leaders of their "enemy."