Is There ANY Doubt As To Which Side The Lame Stream Media Is On?

From The Tank:

Al-Qaeda Internet Communications Go Dark to U.S. Intelligence [Daveed Gartenstein-Ross]

Today Eli Lake has an important article in the New York Sun claiming that U.S. intelligence lost its access to al-Qaeda's Internet communications system (known as Obelisk to American analysts) after recent leaks concerning Osama bin Laden's September 11 video disclosed that al-Qaeda's communications system was penetrated. As Lake notes, this blunder initially appeared to be a victory for U.S. intelligence, since the federal government managed to intercept bin Laden's new video appearance a full four days before al-Qaeda intended to air it.

On September 7, when ABC News posted excerpts from the speech, some of my contacts in the American intelligence community were concerned. They felt that we gained nothing from this triumphalist disclosure, and that disclosing the video's interception could compromise our intelligence-gathering. As Lake reports, these fears proved to be correct:

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.

Over the past year, I've witnessed a number of puzzling leaks to the press that risked compromising sources or methods of gathering intelligence — but never have the repercussions been this dramatic. While I'm not convinced that U.S. intelligence has completely lost its access to the Obelisk system (there may have been other points of infiltration), I hope that the right lessons are being learned.

There isn't any doubt in my mind which side our own media is on. At every turn, at any and all opportunities, all in the name of The Big Scoop, the ways of which our Intelligence Services are mysteriously leaked which enables the enemy to take measures to block the ways we track the enemy.

Time after time, this is the case. The NYSlimes and their collaborators betray the American People. What is it going to take for our CONgress Critters and our much self-vaunted Law Enforcement Agencies going to stop this utter treason?

Have our newsies no brains? Have they no Patriotism? Can they not see the damages they cause? Can they sleep well with themselves? Can they look themselves in the mirror and see that which they have become?

And don't dare tell me that it is under the guise of "the people have the right to know". There comes a time when the people can be told but NOT during current National Security on-going operations. Perhaps we as a nation can learn from the Israelis in this regard.

And who are these "leakers"? Why are they not prosecuted? Surely the ones that are "in the know" are few and far between. It should not be all that difficult to hunt these cretins down and hang them when found.

This is serious business and all these reports do is place us all in more danger than that which we already are, thanks to idiots thinking that "radical and backwards people" cannot do us harm.

Complacency will be the death of us all.

This is unacceptable.

Catch the wave.

Track back: StormWarning's Counterterrorism