How’s this for a classic example of dysfunctionally incompetent criminal stupidity (DICS)? From the Bush administration, naturally.
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.
“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” said Rita Katz, the firm’s 44-year-old founder…
The precise source of the leak remains unknown. Government officials declined to be interviewed about the circumstances on the record, but they did not challenge Katz’s version of events. They also said the incident had no effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts and did not diminish the government’s ability to anticipate attacks.
While acknowledging that SITE had achieved success, the officials said U.S. agencies have their own sophisticated means of watching al-Qaeda on the Web. “We have individuals in the right places dealing with all these issues, across all 16 intelligence agencies,” said Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
No doubt, Mr. Feinstein. That must be why there was a stampede to download the video Katz offered:
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.
Of course, she never offered us anything we needed or didn’t already have. It was because the video had so little value to us that intelligence agencies were all over each other trying to download a copy. “No effect on U.S. intelligence-gathering efforts”, certainly. Whatever Katz and SITE could do by way of obtaining information, we always had the ability to come up with the same information ourselves. Some of it, at least. And just a few days later. Or weeks. So what, right? It’s not like our whole anti-terrorist intelligence-gathering operation is predicated on the assumption that the one piece of intelligence you let slip through the cracks or sit on for a few days could be the one that gives you specific details of the huge attack that will be launched tomorrow.
Putting on my best Keith Olbermann voice now, “Sir, if this does not diminish the government’s ability to anticipate terrorist attacks, that can only mean our ability is at zero.”
The Bush administration. Screwing up TWAT all by themselves. They certainly don’t need any help.