You Will Anyway: Another White House Leak?

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Another White House Leak?

Who would believe a thing like that?

U.S. intelligence officials will investigate allegations that the government improperly leaked a secretly obtained Osama bin Laden video, alerting al-Qaeda to a security gap in the terrorist group's internal communications network that it was able to shut, an intelligence spokesman said yesterday.
Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence, said officials are looking into the leak allegation by the SITE Intelligence Group, which passed the video on to the White House and the director of national intelligence's office before its leak.
"At this point, we don't think there was a leak from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence or the National Counterterrorism Center," Feinstein said.
WaPo

So who from the White House could it have been then? And why would they do that? Hmmmm?

SITE founder Rita Katz told The Post that her company covertly obtained an early copy of a bin Laden video message in early September, then shared the video with senior administration officials on Sept. 7 on the condition that it not be distributed or made public before its official release.
Soon afterward, the video was downloaded by dozens of computers registered to government agencies. Within hours, SITE's copy of the video was leaked to television news networks and broadcast worldwide.

Gee, for some reason, we just can’t seem to catch that bin Laden fella.

SITE said in the Post article that it had obtained the video ahead of its planned al Qaeda release and given two senior Bush administration officials access to it on condition they not reveal they had it until the official release.
[…]
"Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," SITE founder Rita Katz told the Post.
[...]
The White House denied it had leaked the video but said the issue was a cause for concern and an investigation would be needed to determine what happened.
Reuters

Yeah, move over Scooter.

Two senior Bush administration officials. Will we get their names?

Update: Yes.

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Daily Twain:

And other words of wisdom...

It is well to remember that the entire population of the universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others. -- John Andrew Holmes

There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack. -- Molly Ivins

[War] is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious [racket]. ... It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives ... It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. -- Major General Smedley Butler

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe. -- Albert Einstein

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." -- James Thurber

One of the fun aspects of Empire is how many ironies it creates. -- Glenn Greenwald

I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. -- Molly Ivins

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. --George Orwell

I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare. –- Howard Zinn

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it. --Upton Sinclair

If we're the greatest country in the world, then maybe we could have the greatest government. -- Lewis Black

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. -- Aristotle

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who loves his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. -- H.L. Mencken

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -- James Madison, 4th President of the United States

No nation builds a wall out of strength. They build it out of fear. -- Michael Flynn

They call it The American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. -- George Carlin

Texas justice is Texas justice. -- Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokeswoman

When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, “Except in wartime.” -- George McGovern

Sometimes I go about with pity for myself, and all the while Great Winds are carrying me across the sky. ~Ojibway saying