Trading secrets for political gain

In today’s Washington Post:

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.

~~~

Exactly what happened next is unclear. But 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,” Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m.

So let’s put this together. Company gains intelligence. Company gives intelligence to White House. Intelligence mysteriously appears on several networks shortly after the White House is notified of the video and allowed to obtain a copy.

The leak of the Osama video was manna to the Bush administration, coinciding with its carefully timed production of General Petraeus to report to Congress on Iraq, also on the anniversary of 9/11. The appearance of Osama is pure gold to Bush when he is trying to sell war, domestic spying, torture, or any other one of the many products in the White House Fearmongering Line.

In essence, the White House decided to put the Osama video up to the public while Petraeus testified to Congress, doubling the impact. The Bush administration used Osama’s appearance to sell continued deployments to Iraq, “We also understand even more keenly what happens if the United States walks away and creates a vacuum in Iraq, which is a world that is far more dangerous, and in the long run will require a much greater expenditure of U.S. blood and treasure in trying to succeed in going after a terror network.”

It either cynically traded on our nation’s intelligence capabilities, or it exhibited all of the hallmark incompetence, and unintentionally sabotaged our security due to its political avarice.

Naturally, of course, Wingnuts like hero-of-the-stupid Don Surber blame the press — for publishing a leak directly from the Bush Adminstration: “The Pentagon calmly monitored al-Qaeda Intranet communications. And the Pentagon would have gotten away with it too ? if not for those meddling reporters.”

Of course, it wasn’t the Pentagon who obtained the video, and no one is arguing about monitoring what is put on the internets for all to see. But just to clarify things for dumb assholes everywhere: The President is supposed to keep secrets, and the press is supposed to report news to the public. Not vice versa. If the White House simultaneously leaks a video to every media in the nation, blaming the press is dumb on dumb.

Continuing the Stoopid Parade, Assmissile wonders, “Can we please, finally, have an investigation into a real leak?”

Just a hunch, Cap’n Corndog, but the White House isn’t going to be very eager to look into this leak. Sort of like that Valerie Plame thing a few years back.

MORE: White House mouthpiece Dana Perino denies that the White House was involved in the leak:

The White House on Tuesday denied being the source of a leak involving an Osama bin Laden video that a private intelligence firm said had sabotaged its secret ability to intercept Al-Qaeda messages.

Asked if the White House was the source of the leak, spokeswoman Dana Perino said: “No, we were not … We were very concerned to learn about it.”

For those keeping score, in October 2003 Bush said with regard to the Plame leak:

Q Yesterday we were told that Karl Rove had no role in it –

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q — have you talked to Karl and do you have confidence in him –

THE PRESIDENT: Listen, I know of nobody — I don’t know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information.

As they say in Texas, after the case of Lone Star’s empty: “fool me once, shame on ? shame on you. Fool me ? you can’t get fooled again.”