White House denies leaking info that hurt Al-Qaeda spying
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.”
The SITE Intelligence Group said it lost access that it had covertly
acquired to Al-Qaeda’s communications network when the administration of
President George W. Bush let out that the company had obtained a bin
Laden video early last month ahead of its official release, the
Washington Post said.
“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and
worthless,” SITE founder Rita Katz told the newspaper.
SITE monitors websites and public communications linked to radical
Islamist groups and organizations deemed terrorist by US authorities and
provides the information to clients, including news media companies.
It got hold of the bin Laden video before its release and provided it
for free to the White House on the morning of September 7 but insisted
that the video’s existence remain secret until it spotted the official
release, in order to protect its own work.
“Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun
downloading it from the company’s website,” the Post said.
By that afternoon the video and a transcript from it had been leaked
to a cable television news network and broadcast worldwide, the Post
reported. According to Katz, this tipped off Al-Qaeda that its
communications security had been breached by SITE.
White House officials said the matter would be referred to the
Director of National Intelligence, and that the White House was not
planning any internal investigation.
Washington, Wednesday, AFP |