Is the Bush Administration paying to outsource intelligence to some lady in Jersey?

[kpete]

Why Are We Outsourcing Intelligence Activities?

The story in today's Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/09/AR2007100900791.html?hpid=topnews that self-interested leakers inside the White House just compromised a major Al-Qaeda intelligence asset, is bad news. But let's look at it a bit further

This information was disclosed at precisely the time when the Man Called Petraeus was readying his testimony on Capitol Hill, and putting a scary scary bin Laden video out there, to them, properly colored the clash to come. So this was leaked for political purposes, and it certainly compromised an asset.

But the question is, why exactly is this little private intelligence startup getting more information than the federalized, tax-funded intelligence agencies? I remember reading an article about Rita Katz and SITE in the New Yorker abut a year ago. She's a bit unstable, but she's managed to do a lot better, by virtue of sitting on her computer, than the combined forces of the US government. That's frightening.

Here's Buzzflash's take, via email:


Okay, This Group Called "SITE" is Allegedly Finding Stuff Out About Al-Qaeda Before the Bush Administration, Such as the Alleged Latest Osama Tape with the Photo-Shopped Beard. Now, the Woman Who Runs It -- Who Allegedly is Paid a Large Consulting Fee by The White House -- is Accusing the Bush Administration of Destroying Her "Sources" for Finding Out Things About the "Terrorists" That the Bush Administration Doesn't Know. So, She Goes to the Washington Post Complaining that the Bush Administration is Undercutting the War on Terrorism, In Essence, by Leaking the Alleged Osama Tape Too Early After She Sent it To Them. Our Question is Why is this Small Private Organization Called "SITE" Allegedly Beating Our Intelligence Agencies to Information About Osama? Why Isn't the CIA The WH Source? Uh, This is Mind Boggling. And She Regularly Appears to be Supplying the Busheviks with "Secret" Information. This is THE Story that the WP Should be Investigating, Not Her Strange Whining to Them. What the Heck is "SITE" Doing Being Several Steps Ahead of the Combined Department of Homeland Security Intelligence Operation? Or are They Just a WH Propaganda Plant? A Very Strange Story Indeed.

It is strange, and it's missing a lot of elements. Is the Bush Administration paying to outsource intelligence to some lady in Jersey? Is that being done to evade proper oversight? What the hell is going on?

more at:
http://d-day.blogspot.com/2007/10/why-are-we-outsourcing-intelligence.html

[rosesaylavee]

1. I wondered who SITE was when the video

came out and didn't quite understand why they were contracting with the CIA to uncover OBL information. Are they really outsourcing or does she just scoop them every time?

[seemslikeadream]

2. Ms. Katz

SITE Institute web site: http://www.siteinstitute.org

http://www.siteinstitute.org/mission.html
An Invaluable Resource. As the public hearings of the 9-11 Commission made disturbingly clear, the U.S. government is not yet fully equipped to win the war on terror. Bureaucratic wrangling among law enforcement and intelligence agencies has crippled government efforts to apprehend terrorists and dismantle the financial networks that support them. Most government agents currently lack the training and language skills required to track the dense and convoluted financing and recruitment networks of radical Islamic terrorist groups. Because these agents traditionally depend on surveillance and classified intelligence, they have little familiarity with the full range of public sources that the SITE Institute systematically utilizes to conduct research and obtain information crucial to success in the war on terror.

Thorough and Unique Methodology. Through continuous and intensive examination of extremist websites, public records, and international media reports, as well as through undercover work on both sides of the Atlantic, the SITE Institute swiftly locates links among terrorist entities and their supporters. Once a potential terrorist entity is identified, either through SITE's ongoing internal research or via a client's specific query, SITE conducts a comprehensive investigation on the target and entities affiliated to it, scouring corporate records, tax forms, credit reports, videotapes, internet newsgroup postings, and owned websites, among other resources, for indicators of illicit activity. Such research has often yielded important leads that have been, and are continuously being, forwarded to pertinent law enforcement or government agencies, and/or information that has been used for government investigations, raids, and prosecutions, in the U.S and abroad.

Unparalleled Track Record. The SITE Institute works regularly with and provides important and often unique information to journalists, law firms pursuing civil litigation, major corporations, law enforcement, U.S. Congress, and numerous federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department, Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), the FBI, Customs, and the Department of Justice. SITE provides clients and interested parties with well-documented and comprehensive reports on terrorist entities and the individuals and organizations supporting them. Excerpts from these reports frequently make their way into legal papers filed against terrorist entities and their supporters.

Educational Mission. The SITE Institute is guided by the principle that everyone must understand our enemy in order to prevail in the war on terrorism. In addition to its research and investigative activities, SITE seeks to educate the public about the history, ideology, tactics, and methods of Islamic terrorists. SITE Institute staff frequently gives expert interviews and provides information on terrorism to major media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and Time Magazine. They have repeatedly appeared on CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, the Fox News Channel, NPR, BBC, and a variety of other national and international television and radio networks.

Experienced and Dedicated Staff. The staff at SITE has years of experience in the research and analysis of terrorist networks, including how terrorist groups receive and transmit funding; how and where recruitment for new terrorist operatives occurs; where the money comes from; and how these groups communicate. SITE researchers are fluent in several languages including Arabic, French, German, Spanish, and Hebrew, and they maintain an unparalleled worldwide network of contacts and resources.

Our Staff

Rita Katz, Director and co-founder of the SITE Institute, has studied, tracked, and analyzed international terrorists and their financial operations for more than six years. Since well before September 11, she has personally briefed government officials, including former terrorism czar Richard Clarke and his staff in the White House, as well as investigators in the Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security on the financing and recruitment networks of the terrorist movement. Many of her leads have prompted the government to investigate and take legal action against individuals and organizations suspected of ties to terrorism.

Before founding the SITE Institute in 2002, Ms. Katz served as Research Director of the Investigative Project in Washington, DC. Born in Iraq and a graduate of the Middle Eastern Studies program at Tel Aviv University, Katz speaks both Arabic and Hebrew with native fluency.

Ms. Katz is the author of TERRORIST HUNTER: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America (HarperCollins, 2003). Her commentary on terrorism issues frequently appears in prominent media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, 60 Minutes, CNN, and The Wall Street Journal.

Josh Devon, Senior Analyst and co-founder of the SITE Institute, focuses on the research and analysis of the global terrorist network. He has consulted on terrorism-related investigations for several government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the FBI. Mr. Devon has published numerous articles on terrorism, including the extensive use of the Internet by terrorist groups and their followers worldwide. He appears regularly in the media. Mr. Devon has a B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently pursuing an advanced degree in International Relations, concentrating in Middle East Studies, at Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

Greg Caplan, Director of Programming & Development, received his Ph.D. in European History from Georgetown University in 2001. He has worked in government relations for the American Jewish Committee in Berlin, Germany; lectured on a variety of topics in the U.S. and Europe, and published extensively on transatlantic relations and the Middle East.

The Senior Translator at the SITE Institute was born and raised in the Middle East, speaking Arabic and French with native fluency. For more than a decade, SITE's Senior Translator was responsible for translation and interpretation at a Western Embassy in the region.

The Terrorist Hunter Speaks -- An amazing story of an Iraqi Jew at the heart of dismantling terrorism. June 26, 2003.

http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory062603.asp
New York Times, September 23, 2004

WEB WAR
Even Near Home, a New Front Is Opening in the Terror Battle
By ERIC LIPTON and ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: September 23, 2004

CLIFTON, N.J. - The flags that sprouted after the Sept. 11 attacks still flap on lawns and flutter on poles outside well-tended homes here, about 15 miles from Manhattan. Looming above them is a concrete tower that houses a real-estate firm, an office supplies company - and, until recently, investigators fear, an outpost of Al Qaeda.


Warren Westura for
The New York Times
Fortress ITX, in Clifton, N.J.,
unwittingly played host to an
Arabic-language Web site
that urged attacks on American
and Israeli targets.




On the second floor, an Internet company called Fortress ITX unwittingly played host to an Arabic-language Web site where postings in recent weeks urged attacks against American and Israeli targets. "The Art of Kidnapping" was explained in electronic pamphlets, along with "Military Instructions to the Mujahedeen," and "War Inside the Cities." Visitors could read instructions on using a cellphone to remotely detonate a bomb, and one even asked for help in manufacturing small missiles.

"How can this be?" asked Cathy Vasilenko, who lives a few doors away from the Fortress ITX office. "How can this be going on in my neighborhood?"

Federal investigators, with the help of a small army of private contractors monitoring sites around the clock and across the world, are trying to find out. Ever since the United States-led coalition smashed Al Qaeda's training grounds in Afghanistan, cyber substitutes, which recruit terrorists and raise money, have proliferated.

While Qaeda operatives have employed an arsenal of technical tools to communicate - from e-mail encryption and computer war games to grisly videotapes like the recent ones showing beheadings believed to have been carried out by Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - investigators say they worry most about the Internet because extremists can reach a broad audience with relatively little chance of detection.

By examining sites like those stored inside the electronic walls of the Clifton business, investigators are hoping to identify who is behind them, what links they might have to terror groups, and what threat, if any, they might pose. And in a step that has raised alarms among civil libertarians and others and so far proven unpersuasive in the courtroom, prosecutors are charging that those administering these sites should be held criminally responsible for what is posted.

Attempting to apply broad new powers established by the Patriot Act, the federal government wants to punish those who it claims provide "expert advice or assistance" and therefore play an integral part of a global terror campaign that increasingly relies on the Internet. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee recently, called such Web sites "cyber sanctuaries."

"These networks are wonderful things that enable all kinds of good things in the world," Mr. Wolfowitz said of the Internet. "But they're also a tool that the terrorists use to conceal their identities, to move money, to encrypt messages, even to plan and conduct operations remotely."

Many question the government's strategy of trying to combat terrorism by prosecuting Web site operators. "I think it is an impossible task," said Thomas Hegghammer of the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, an agency that monitors the use of the Internet by Al Qaeda. "You can maybe catch some people. But you will never ever be able to stem the flow of radical Islamic propaganda."

He pointed out that it is difficult to distinguish between a real terrorist and a make-believe one online. "You would end up prosecuting a lot of angry young people who do this because it is exciting, not because they want to actually participate in terrorist attacks," he said. "I don't think it helps you fight Al Qaeda."

The government faces many hurdles in pursuing virtual terrorists. While many militant Islamic message boards and Web pages reside on computer servers owned by North American Internet companies, outfits like Fortress ITX say it would be impractical - and unethical, given that the company sells server space to clients who then resell it - for them to keep track of all of the content stored within their equipment.

"It is hideous, loathsome," said Robert Ellis, executive vice president of Fortress, after viewing postings from the Abu al-Bukhary Web site his company hosted. "It is the part of this business that is deeply disturbing." His company shut down the site within the last month after learning of it from a reporter. The intense focus on Muslim-related sites like Abu al-Bukhary, in an era when domestically produced anarchist manuals are commonly available on the Web, has provoked charges that the anti-cyber sanctuary effort is really a misguided anti-Muslim campaign that is compromising important First Amendment rights.

This effort "opens the floodgates to really marginalizing a lot of the free speech that has been a hallmark of the American legal and political system," said Arsalan Iftikhar, legal director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "Globally it really does nothing but worsen the image of America in the rest of the world."

Tracking Cyber-Terror

The detective work begins in a northeast city in a compact office set up by a self-proclaimed terrorist hunter. This is the headquarters of Rita Katz, an Iraqi-born Jew whose father was executed in Baghdad in 1969, shortly after Saddam Hussein's Baath Party came to power.


Sabina Louise Pierce for
The New York Times
Rita Katz heads an institute
that monitors Web sites
around the clock for clues
to the plans of terrorists.




Finding terrorists has become a crusade for Ms. Katz, who began going to pro-Palestinian rallies and fund-raisers disguised as a Muslim woman in the late 1990's, then presented information to the federal government in an effort to prove there were ties between Islamic fundamentalist groups in the United States and terror organizations like Hamas or Al Qaeda.

Federal agencies, including the National Security Agency, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security, monitor suspected terror sites on the Internet and sometimes track users. Private groups like Ms. Katz's Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute and The Middle East Media Research Institute are also keeping track of the ever-changing content of these sites. Ms. Katz's institute, which relies on government contracts and corporate clients, may be the most influential of those groups, and she is among the most controversial of the cyberspace monitors. While some experts praise her research as solid, some of her targets view her as a vigilante. Several Islamic groups and charities, for example, sued for defamation after she claimed they were terrorist fronts, even though they were not charged with a crime.

Sitting under wall maps of Europe, the Middle East and the United States - including one pinpointing locations of suspected terror cells or possible supporters - Ms. Katz and her team of computer technicians and researchers spend their days searching the Internet for any new messages from militant groups and new addresses for terror sites. Her institute, based in a city she does not disclose, also has a small crew in Israel, which allows the organization to monitor sites around the clock.

"We are trying to think the way terrorist organizations think," said Ms. Katz, "The Internet today has become a front in the war itself."

Keeping tabs on these jihadist sites - several hundred exist - requires vigilance, as videos and statements uploaded by different groups often appear only briefly. A recent Tuesday was a particularly busy day. The Islambouli Brigade, a militant Islamic group, turned to one popular message board site called islamic-minbar.com, operated out of the Netherlands, to release the names of two women it said were responsible for the Aug. 24 explosions of two Russian planes and to claim responsibility for an attack at a Moscow subway station. "When we pledge to avenge our Chechen brothers, we do not break our promise," the Aug. 31 posting said.

Jaish Ansar al-Sunna, a group that has surfaced in Iraq, posted a video on its Internet site showing the bodies of 12 Nepali contractor workers who it had taken hostage and killed. The site was taken down that same day, but then reappeared on a computer server of a Utah-based Web hosting company.

While staffers at Ms. Katz's office rushed to translate these postings, others were busy snooping by using a special software program to electronically suck up more than 15,000 computer files from a Web site, or referring to a custom-made database to identify sites with common administrators, an assignment initiated by a government request. This week, they watched postings on the Web site Ansarnet.ws/vb alerting followers that a hostage had been killed, then directing them to a video showing the beheading of an American engineer held hostage in Iraq.

A crucial question, of course, is whether a site is simply offering inspirational rhetoric or is genuinely linked to terror strikes. Often, Web site exhortations are followed by acts of violence, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are connected.

In late May, for example, shortly after a kidnapping guide appeared on an online magazine called Al Battar, a wave of kidnappings and beheadings started in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Last December, a 42-page essay published on a Web site called Global Islamic Media observed that "the Spanish government could not tolerate more than two, maximum three blows, after which it will have to withdraw as a result of popular pressure" from Iraq. Three months later, bombs tore apart trains in Madrid, resulting in the eventual departure of Spanish troops from Iraq.

In Clifton, the digital images and terrorist manuals from Abu al-Bukhary's site resided, like data from thousands of other Internet pages hosted at Fortress ITX, inside a sprawling computer room. Pointing to the wall of boxes with blinking lights, Fortress executives said they did not know who controlled most of the Web sites on their servers, as they sell space to clients who then resell it to countless others. "It is like an orange you buy at the supermarket," Mr. Ellis said. "Try figuring out what farm that came from."

Strategy of Prosecution

Knocking militant groups off the Internet for a day or two by urging individual Web hosting companies to shut down the sites didn't accomplish much, Ms. Katz believed. So the government, in an unusual alliance with Ms. Katz, has been testing a different strategy in the last year.

Sami Omar al-Hussayen would be their first target. The 35-year-old father of three had arrived at the University of Idaho in 1999 to pursue a doctorate in computer science. In his spare time, Mr. Hussayen, who lived in Moscow, Idaho, established a series of Internet sites with names like liveislam.net or alasr.ws ("the generation") and served as a regional leader of the Islamic Assembly of North America, a group that described itself as a charitable organization, but which prosecutors said recruited members and instigated "acts of violence and terrorism."

Along with news from the Middle East and interviews with scholars, the sites included more disturbing information. Videos displayed the bodies of dead suicide attackers as a narrator declared "we had brethren who achieved what they sought, and that is martyrdom in the cause of Allah." Requests were posted for donations to Chechen groups that were trying to "show the truth about Russian terrorism." Clerical edicts appeared on topics including "suicide operations against the Jews."

The Justice Department, which declined to comment for this article, did not claim that Mr. Hussayen had authored the most militant items. Instead, by registering the Web sites, paying for them and posting the material, he was charged with providing material support to a banned terrorist group.

But Mr. Hussayen's lawyers said their client was expressing his free-speech rights. The Internet is the modern equivalent of the soap box, said David Z. Nevin, one of the lawyers. "They were wildly too zealous," Mr. Nevin said about Ms. Katz and the Justice Department. "This was not within a country mile of the kind of behavior that this nation has any business trying to criminalize."

The jury was unconvinced by the government's case, and acquitted Mr. Hussayen in June after a monthlong trial. "We went through files and files and files of evidence - transcripts of telephone calls, bank statements, all the e-mails, information from the Internet - and we could not substantiate that he was directly involved with a terrorist organization," said Claribel Ingraham, one of the jurors. "It just wasn't there."

The setback in Idaho has not stopped the government from pursuing similar cases. In late July, a warrant was issued in Connecticut for Babar Ahmad, resulting in his arrest in London Aug. 5. The 30-year-old computer technician at a London college is accused of setting up Internet sites from 1997 to 2003, most prominently azzam.com, to recruit terrorists and raise money for them. "If you're going to use cyberspace, we're there and we're paying attention," said Kevin J. O'Connor, the United States Attorney from Connecticut, after Mr. Ahmad's arrest.

The trial has not started - the United States is trying to persuade British authorities to extradite him - but already Muslim groups and civil libertarians in Britain are assailing the case. In a letter from his prison cell that was posted on the Internet, Mr. Ahmad asserted that he was imprisoned "to strike terror and fear into the hearts of the docile, sleeping Muslim community."

Ms. Katz said she was not discouraged by the criticism of the prosecutions. "When you call for the death of people and then it results in actions - that is beyond the First Amendment," she said. "You are organizing a crime."

[DrBlix]

13. Ms. Katz

SITE and an Israeli intelligence front operation in Washington, MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute), are closely linked.
.
MEMRI has been responsible for mis-translating several speeches made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.
.
SITE's director is Rita Katz, an Iraq-born Jew who moved to Israel after her father was executed by Saddam Hussein's government for spying for the Mossad.
.
She emigrated to the United States from Israel in 1997.
.
Katz worked for the US Treasury Department in its pursuit of Muslim charity funds in the United States in Operation Green Quest and as a consultant for the FBI.
.
The main coordinator for Green Quest was the then-head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, Michael Chertoff.

[KoKo]

16. She also infiltrated Palestinian-American Groups to spy on them..

Finding terrorists has become a crusade for Ms. Katz, who began going to pro-Palestinian rallies and fund-raisers disguised as a Muslim woman in the late 1990's, then presented information to the federal government in an effort to prove there were ties between Islamic fundamentalist groups in the United States and terror organizations like Hamas or Al Qaeda.

Federal agencies, including the National Security Agency, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security, monitor suspected terror sites on the Internet and sometimes track users. Private groups like Ms. Katz's Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute and The Middle East Media Research Institute are also keeping track of the ever-changing content of these sites. Ms. Katz's institute, which relies on government contracts and corporate clients, may be the most influential of those groups, and she is among the most controversial of the cyberspace monitors. While some experts praise her research as solid, some of her targets view her as a vigilante. Several Islamic groups and charities, for example, sued for defamation after she claimed they were terrorist fronts, even though they were not charged with a crime.

[seemslikeadream]

3. I think there is a video of her speaking at that fundamentalists meeting in DC

Rita Katz

I off to look for it

[seemslikeadream]

4. she's in one of these videos I think

oops I was wrong but good to watch anyway

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K30_Zz7tHYs&eurl=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaXs8MdmXWY&eurl=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okLFCQTO-a0&eurl=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQRiAnYj4gY&eurl=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h3xG-kQaQI&eurl=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWaZgllv6HE&eurl=

[seemslikeadream]

5. crediting the 50-year-old woman, who uses the pseudonym Laura Mansfield.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007; Page A01
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.
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/cheney/

[Junkdrawer]

6. The Administration is planting manufactured videos....

and needs a third party to, as it were, money-launder.

[dailykoff]

8. Looks that way.

What she's busy "monitoring" on the internet I can only guess but I'm confident that it has nothing to do with terrorism.

[babylonsister]

10. Then why would the 3rd party complain because the wh let the info out? nt

[Junkdrawer]

15. Perhaps because she's an unwitting tool? She plays Matta Hari...

and the guys with the fake evidence makes sure she gets lucky...

[seemslikeadream]

7. Terrorist Hunter:

Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America




http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/29/060529fa_fact
Private Jihad
How Rita Katz got into the spying business.
by Benjamin Wallace-Wells
May 29, 2006 Text Size:
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Katz, Rita; Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE); Terrorism, Terrorists; Intelligence Issues (strategic, clandestine, military); Internet; Chat Rooms, Message Boards; September 11th, 2001 (9/11) Rita Katz is tiny and dark, with volatile brown eyes, and when she is nervous or excited she can’t sit still. She speaks in torrents, ten minutes at a stretch. Everybody who works in intelligence calls her Rita, even people who don’t know her well. She sometimes telephones people she hasn’t met—important people in the government—to tell them things that she thinks they ought to know. She keeps copies of letters from officials whose investigations into terrorism she has assisted. “You and your staff . . . were invaluable additions to the investigative team,” the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Salt Lake City Division wrote; the Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boise said, “You are a rare and extraordinary gem that has appeared too infrequently throughout the course of history.” The letters come in handy, she told me, when she meets with skepticism or lack of interest; they are her establishment bona fides.

Katz, who was born in Iraq and speaks fluent Arabic, spends hours each day monitoring the password-protected online chat rooms in which Islamic terrorists discuss politics and trade tips: how to disperse botulinum toxin or transfer funds, which suicide vests work best. Occasionally, a chat-room member will announce that he is turning in his user name and password and going to Iraq to become a martyr, a shaheed. Several weeks later, his friends will post a report of the young man blowing himself up. Katz usually logs on at six in the morning. When she has guests for dinner, she leaves a laptop open on the kitchen counter, so she can check for updates. “It is completely addicting,” she says. “You wake up thinking, I’ve been offline for seven hours, but the terrorists have been making plans.”

Traditionally, intelligence has been filtered through government agencies, such as the C.I.A. and the N.S.A., which gather raw data and analyze it, and the government decides who sees the product of their work and when. Katz, who is the head of an organization called the Search for International Terrorist Entities, or SITE Institute, has made it her business to upset that monopoly. She and her researchers mine online sources for intelligence, which her staff translates and sends out by e-mail to a list of about a hundred subscribers.

Katz’s client list includes people in the government who are presumably frustrated by how long it takes to get information through official channels; it also includes people in corporate security and in the media, who rarely get much useful material from the C.I.A. She has worked with prosecutors on more than a dozen terrorism investigations, and many American officers in Iraq rely on Katz’s e-mails to, for example, brief their troops on the designs for explosives that are passed around terrorist Web sites. “You’re thrown into Baghdad, and there are a million different groups out there you’ve never heard of claiming responsibility for attacks,” Robert Worth, a Times reporter who used Katz’s service during the eighteen months he spent in Iraq, told me. “Rita really knows what she’s talking about—who’s responsible for attacks, what’s a legitimate terrorist organization and what’s not.” Because many reporters rebroadcast her information, it can reach the public before people in the government have had a chance to evaluate it; her organization’s work is cited in the Times and the Washington Post about twice a month.


from the issuecartoon banke-mail thisKatz has many critics, who believe that she is giving terrorists a bigger platform than they would otherwise have, and that the certainty and obsession that make her a dedicated archivist also make her too eager to find plots where they don’t exist; she publicized a manual for using botulinum in terror attacks, for example, which experts later concluded was not linked to any serious threat. It’s possible that her immersion in the world of terrorism has removed whatever skepticism or doubts she may have had. “Much as Al Jazeera underplays terrorist threats, the SITE Institute at times overhypes them,” Michael Scheuer, the former head of the C.I.A.’s bin Laden unit, said.

More fundamentally, some people involved in counterterrorism do not think that a private group with limited resources can do as good or as prudent a job as government agencies can. “Intelligence analysis is a set of skills that you learn, not just something that anyone can walk in off the street and pick up,” Steven Aftergood, who monitors the intelligence community for the Federation of American Scientists, told me. Katz, however, pointed out that, for example, the professionals consistently missed signals about Al Qaeda before September 11, 2001, and said that she was simply filling a gap. (A 2004 audit showed that the F.B.I. alone had thousands of hours of untranslated intercepts.) Indeed, Katz has received outsourcing contracts from the government.

Before the September 11, 2001, attacks, the official counterterrorism agencies paid relatively little attention to the jihadis’ online presence. But in the past few years that has changed, in large measure because of changes in the way terror networks operate. “Nearly everything about Al Qaeda that matters is happening online right now,” Peter Bergen, a journalist and terrorism expert, said. Some analysts believe that Al Qaeda today is a model of what is called “leaderless resistance”: self-appointed cells operating with help and inspiration from materials that they find online. Traffic rose dramatically after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, posted a video of the beheading of the American contractor Nicholas Berg.

“It’s not as if Al Qaeda were inventing this,” Jessica Stern, a terrorism specialist who served on the National Security Council under President Clinton, said. What’s unique about Islamic terror and the Internet is that there is up-to-the-minute access to what terrorists are thinking. Rita Katz is, in a sense, the natural complement, the engineer of a leaderless counter-resistance to the terrorist groups. “Some people think that she’s a zealot,” Stern said when I asked her about Katz, “but only a zealot would provide this kind of service.”

[dailykoff]

9. Islamic terrorist chat rooms, right.

Another footsoldier in the war on Islam.

[Junkdrawer]

17. Islamic terrorist flytrap rooms, is probably more like it...

"Step right in...plan your next terror attack...nobody's watching..."

:rofl:

[babylonsister]

11. No, they're not. Here's a consideration:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2008742

[dailykoff]

12. Jury on terror connection: "It just wasn't there."

She's apparently monitoring Islamic websites for "terrorist" activity defined as expressions of sympathy for Palestinian and Chechyan rebels. These days al Qaeda is anybody you don't like.

[gateley]

14. K&R. nt