So the war of fiction disinformation and propaganda rules in the new 21st Century !

Since the Judith Miller fiction piece in the the "New York Times" in 2003 along with the fact that every US Government Funded Agency has declined to tell the full truth since the end of the last great war this cynical juror is still out on the veracity or accuracy of this information as it has all the hall marks of "Judith Miller" stamped all over it !

This must be a first for a government (and a well respected one at that !) Leaking a story, eh ? Who'd have thought it.

Anyway, as the article says, it was only a propaganda message that got leaked, nothing important. After all, it's not as if that well respected government mentioned on TV that they were tracking the leader of a terrorist organisation by monitoring their cell phone, is it ?

"Why, it's almost as if SITE were actually a media beastie rather than an intelligence one."

Surely all the best Intelligences are invisible media beasties, Lewis. .... Men in cloaks? :-)

What else is new?

Yeah, someone who cannot even secure his own website and provide one-time download or restricted download is claiming to have super-duper James Bond like capabilities and the ability to infiltrate the "secure jihadi network".

Yep, we believe that...

What's next, Paris Hilton leading a down raid to catch the "enemy of the mankind" and throw him in gitmo?

Wasn't SITE's complaint that releasing the video early tipped off terrorists that their network had been hacked, not that someone else got to be the first to publish the video? Sounds like a valid complaint to me.

...look at the quality of the people you'd have trying to catch you. Sad. I can just picture Faux News in the 40's.

"The invasion is expected on the 6th, at Normandy. In addition to the primary forces, paratroopers and coastal bombardment will be used to soften the German defenses.

The codename for this massive invasion is "Overlord," and the allies have taken great pains to prevent the German High Command from learning of it. So, if you're German, forget everything we just told you.

This is FOX NEWS. We love freedom.... to toady to the Republicans."

wtf you arnt being crazy whats wrong D:

As if the Cheney administration actually wants to catch OBL! As long as he's out there somewhere, they have licence to do *anything* they want in The War Against Terror.

But getting some more propoganda of their own out, via the Republican mouthpiece Fox News, now that's something worth pursuing.

And as others have pointed out, it's not like this SITE crew are really likely to find anything useful anyway, so why should Cheney care about screwing them over?

"These organisations included the CIA, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. Within five hours, the video and accompanying English transcript was on Fox News and other Western media outlets, well in advance of the al-Qaeda release."

Ah yes, the video where Osama speaking 'agent provocateurese' say things like 'don't vote for that democrat Obama' (translated from the phrase 'embrace islam').

Of course all Fox viewers immediately try to avoid embracing islam, ('hey chuck isn't that democrat a muslim? Lets not vote for him, someone might accuse of embracing islam!').

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=1898712767284671230

Then he goes on to talk about how the US economy is screwed (i.e. don't discuss how the US economy is screwed because that's terrorist talk).

Even better, he seems to have aged a lot in the still photo that preceded the video, then magically is young again in the video, the voice is badly dubbed to the images and the video freezes whenever he talks about current events and only unfreezes when does his generic anti-USA rants.

Flick through the video when it unfreezes at about 12:30, he gets wider and the table longer at that point. It's not even the same shot.

Yeeehhh,rrrriiiiiigggghhhhht.

I totally believe that video, and also that Orville is really a talking duck. Gosh what a total and complete surprise that that video comes from Rita Katz.

It was so normal i didn't even realise it was him, my mind thanks him for his moment of sanity :)

So the White House is more interested in the propaganda value of so-called terror intel than it's practical use in the again war on terror? Gee I would never have figured that one out for myself! I mean it's not like the White House ever fabricated terror intel to justify illegal invasions, extra-judicial assassinations, kidnapping and torture on a grand scale. Oh wait a minute - yes they did and they still do!

Evidently the CIA, the Pentagon, and the DHS don't know that servers keep logs and admins look at logs. And these are the people supposed to be defending the free world against terrorism (or something - Islam, pork sandwiches, Paris Hilton, take your pick)? I'm surprised they even know how to wipe their asses.

They call it "intelligence", I call it sheer stupidity. God protect us from our protectors.

how many of you w@nkers are posting via proxy from the desert, or using one of dozens of different net aliases, paid for by the post by an "advertising agency" in California or New York? Pretending to be "indignant Americans" or "concerned Westerners" and dropping the exact same spiel everywhere you go?

How much do you get paid I wonder? Is it by the post still, or by the hour? Gonna drop in a product placement shill while you're here, before popping off to the DailyKos, the two dozen "Conservative" sites you have a fake persona for, and Slashdot for a chaser? Perhaps you could help Hsu do some "bundling" with all those different identities as well.

Funny how easy you can drop the oh-so-clever "Faux News" line, but for some strange reason, any media outlet that kisses Democrat/liberal arse *isn't* a paid mouthpiece? Only the ones you don't agree with (or are paid, threatened, and/or brainwashed not to agree with) are the "mouthpieces" and "propaganda".

Stalin's "Useful Idiots", now on the Internet. Where a single trust-fund spoiled college brat, or government funded welfare sponge can pretend to be over a dozen "concerned" voices, criticizing and spouting the same traitorous memes and lame 60's leftist propaganda lines, adding the appearance of mass acceptance until their favorite "big lie" is finally accepted as a substitute "truth".

There needs to be an icon of a big "finger" up, not a thumb.

But thats not the real man from mars.

the real guy has all small letters, this is just a copy cat dude trying to be funny

would lead one to think that the video was leaked intentionally, as a way to warn the jihadis that their net has been haxxored. Keeping the opposition (or a passable impression thereof) upright is in the best self-interest of the bushies, at least until they can con gress into letting them b0mb I ran.

Anyone else here concerned that mercenary intel outfits like SITE and breaking the law to sell information to US and foreign governments?

@Anonymous Coward - Riiiiiiiight...liberals are being paid to make posts...and so are conservatives...I think you are letting people off the hook for their stupid comments...idiocy knows no bounds and the net is a sounding board that proves it... by the minute...thanks for doing your part.

@Everyone else - the point is the video was leaked...and by proxy the network that was penetrated (which could have down the road yielded some good intel) was put on alert by it. The leak happened because government employees make s4it for money (which is why so many are corrupt, and don't pretend you don't have the same problem in GB) and when some jagoff journalist makes them an offer they take it to supplement their income.

SITE was definitely wrong to take this to the White House...intelligence doesn't live their anymore, only cronyism will answer the doorbell. Somehow people still think that the White House has their best interests in mind. It doesn't. I vociferously made this point in 1998 and 99 but in 2000 Bush still got elected. I reiterated this point in the years between 2000 and 2004 only to see Bush elected...again.

Now all of a sudden it is really popular to rip on Bush and I ask...where the f*ck where you guys when it mattered in 2000 and 2004? You are late to the party. Some of the Americans who read this rag even voted for Bush and now are surprised at the result! If you leave your baby alone with a hungry wolf, and the wolf eats the baby...who is at fault? The parent or the wolf? The wolf was just being a wolf. The parent is stupid for trusting it alone with the baby.

But I digress...the point here is the leak should never have happened. That video should have gone to the FBI and the CIA and perhaps the NSA and been completely compartmentalized for analysis. It was simply a poor decision on SITE, they should have known better than to trust the wolf.

Didn't anyone learn from Red Riding Hood? Apparently not.

The only thing Judith Miller and her colleagues are guilty of is letting the current American Administration have carte blanche over the media. The same goes for Congress. It is hard to have a campaign of disinformation when you won't let out ANY information.

Funny...it's a bit too damp in the UK to be considered a desert. Maybe if your pal Dubya and his chums in the oil megalocorps get their way then global warming will turn parts of the UK into desert though.

Not a bad flame by the way, Anon Coward: some of us obviously touched a sore spot there! Is it the time of the month? The day after Patch Tuesday - always a difficult time for the running dogs of Washington and Redmond.

Let me give you a tip for quality flaming though: while hinting at our Moscow/Google gold connections try to address one or two of the facts in the situation even if just inaccurately and abusively :)

Nope. Not at all. I love Freedom of Speech but that is a right extended to those that happen to have been born in the same country as me. Not to the world. Not to mention that it is likely that the site that hosted that video is in a country in which there are no trademark or copyright laws which makes it fair game.

Now if only the Klan would host their sites off American soil so we could start hacking them to monitor domestic terrorism as well.

Information warfare...you either get it or you don't. I am more concerned about real merc outfits like Blackwater that actually are operating outside any laws of any nation. At the very least they should be held to the same code of conduct as detailed in the UCMJ.

"how many of you w@nkers are posting via proxy from the desert, or using one of dozens of different net aliases, paid for by the post by an "advertising agency" in California or New York? Pretending to be "indignant Americans" or "concerned Westerners" and dropping the exact same spiel everywhere you go?"

None, not even you. Occam's razor, they're pissed off Americans, perhaps on several forums, but there's no 'one forum per pissed off person' rule.

Rita Katz reads like a phoney, use your brain. The story here is that the CIA FBI etc. blew her cover, by releasing the video to the media. This apparently tipped of jihadists that she had access to their forum and they blocked her.

Right away, that story falls apart, she's being doing that 'I have secret access to forums used by jihadists' line for years, she's even released a book 'Terrorist Hunter' and done a TV tour to promote it. Here she is testifying before the house armed services committee:

http://armedservices.house.gov/pdfs/TUTC021407/Katz_Testimony021407.pdf

Gee, so at this point I'm supposed to accept that jihadists have special social forums that only they & Katz all know about, and they congregate on these secret forums and that all the previous times she's boasted of having access to these secret jihadist forums DIDN'T tip them off. Not the TV interviews, the stories about this bollocks to Congress, none of that tipped them off, but the premature release of this bad mash up video of Bin Laden did?

And then having said that she's now blocked, she gets hold of a second video? Wow way to contradict yourself!

She's promoting a line, and her Washington address & full time PR job indicates she's a professional lobbyist. Not difficult to guess whose paying her bill either.

Al Qaeda in Ur Slashdot? I don't think so.

Jihadists n Ur elReg? Oh grow up!

What I find incredible is that the NSA & CIA allow professional lobbyists to give 'intelligence' briefings to Congressional committees.

It is not the first time that someone in Washington has spiked an investigation that was getting close to Osama bin Laden. Remember the announcement that "we know where he is, 'cos we're tracking his mobile phone"?

I must agree with the earlier Anonymous Coward - the current US Administration do not want ObL caught. He is far, far too useful out in the wild, giving them apparent justification for turning the world into a Police State.

"What I find incredible is that the NSA & CIA allow professional lobbyists to give 'intelligence' briefings to Congressional committees."

Whenever you're all growed up, Anonymous Coward, you can do whatever you like and don't need permission to share what is only really always just personal opinion serving a better beta purpose which may be at odds with an old Gravy Train view..... which is surely what intelligence is all about?

Some working in Intelligence, thinking that they are just too intelligent ever to be sussed out as also being what would be considered just criminal, would think that such a freedom is theirs to abuse for personal enrichment........ and all so easily swept under the carpet with a playing of the National Security trump card to hide the shenanigans. It is however, in those cases, really on the Joker card being played for they aint playing by any rules other than the ones they make up for themselves as they go along.

Some even say that rather than being for us they are against us, just as if as a cancer destroying its host ........ http://www.madcowprod.com/10092007.html ....... and that is surely anything and everything but Intelligence being used.

"Nope. Not at all. I love Freedom of Speech but that is a right extended to those that happen to have been born in the same country as me. Not to the world."

Outside of your country, asswit, you don't get to define anybody's rights.

"Information warfare...you either get it or you don't. "

Clearly.