We wondered about the story behind the WH leak of the bin Laden video in time for Petraeus' report

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Now the private intelligence agency which obtained the video is complaining the White House blew their cover when they released it at the time of the Petraeus testimony . . .


White House denies leaking info that hurt Al-Qaeda spying

1 hour, 17 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - 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.

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.


report: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071009/pl_afp/usattacksintelligenceleak


another account:

Report: White House Ruins Terrorist Intel
White House Denies It Prematurely Released Al Qaeda Video, Hurting Intelligence-Gathering

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2007

(CBS) A small, privately run intelligence analysis company says that a Bush administration leak has ruined years of clandestine work to find and exploit al Qaeda secrets on the Internet, the Washington Post reports.

SITE Institute, one of many private companies that troll extremist Web content and use secret methods to find unreleased material and release it early, against the wishes of the militants creating it, was the first to obtain an Osama bin Laden video last month.

According to the report, Rita Katz, who runs SITE, told The Post she turned the video over to the White House on the condition that it not be made public until the material was released on line by al Qaeda's own media wing.

Katz told The Post that by the afternoon of Sept. 7, the day she turned the video over to White House officials, it had been leaked and was appearing on myriad news Web sites and television networks around the world.

SITE claims the White House leak - the source of which had not been confirmed, according to the report - tipped al Qaeda off to the glitch that had been exploited for years by the company, rendering the practice useless for future intelligence gathering.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/09/terror/main3346411.shtml?source=mostpop_story


and this from Sept. 12:

Bin Laden, Brought to You by . . .

Early yesterday morning, a South Carolina Web designer who works at home managed to scoop al-Qaeda by publicly unveiling its new video, a feat she has accomplished numerous times since 2002. Within hours, cable news stations were broadcasting images of Osama bin Laden commemorating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and crediting the 50-year-old woman, who uses the pseudonym Laura Mansfield.

A similar event occurred Friday, when another group beat al-Qaeda by nearly a full day with the release of the first video images of bin Laden to appear publicly since 2004. That group, the SITE Institute, provided the tape to government agencies and news organizations at a time when many well-known jihadist Web sites had been shut down in a powerful cyberattack by unknown hackers.

It was the latest round of electronic warfare between al-Qaeda and a small community of individuals and companies that troll the Internet for messages from terrorists -- as a livelihood, a personal obsession or both. Often, the groups compete to be the first to find and post a new video or message. Frequently, they accomplish their goal several steps ahead of government agencies who turn to them for the material.

Since Friday, at least three high-profile video messages have been snatched from al-Qaeda-affiliated Web sites by groups using a combination of computer tricks, personal connections and ingenuity to find and download password-protected content . . .

report: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/11/AR2007091102465_pf.html