The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets - washingtonpost.com:

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, who has garnered wide attention by publicizing statements and videos from extremist chat rooms and Web sites, while attracting controversy over the secrecy of SITE's methodology. Her firm provides intelligence about terrorist groups to a wide range of paying clients, including private firms and military and intelligence agencies from the United States and several other countries.

Okay, tell me again how this pack of bumbling imbeciles in the White House got the reputation of being strong against terror? These guys, in the words of Robert B. Parker's character Hawk, could fuck up a beach party.

If I was them, I wouldn't be so eager to get the word out that the instigator of 9/11 was still free, upright and breathing, since that fact is the single most glaring failure in Dubbya's Global War on Terra. But that's the truly terrifying thing...they don't recognize this as a failure.

Y'know what? I don't think the Bush Administration really WANTS to catch him. It's as if deep down, having the bearded boogeyman of Tora Bora out there in the wind is an asset to their power grab. "We need warrantless wiretapping because Osama's still out there, trying to kill us."

So getting Osama's scary visage out there right now, even if you have to leak it, is more important than preserving the techniques by which they got the tape.