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| For those who are curious about the damage leaks do |
| 2005-12-20 |
| As an example of the damage caused by unauthorized disclosures to reporters, President Bush said at his news conference on Monday that Osama bin Laden had been tipped by a leak that the United States was tracking his location through his telephone. After this information was published, Mr. Bush said, Mr. bin Laden stopped using the phone. The president was apparently referring to an article in The Washington Times in August 1998. Toward the end of a profile of Mr. bin Laden on the day after American cruise missiles struck targets in Afghanistan and Sudan, that newspaper, without identifying a source, reported that "he keeps in touch with the world via computers and satellite phones." The article drew little attention at the time in the United States. But last year, the Sept. 11 commission declared in its final report: "Al Qaeda's senior leadership had stopped using a particular means of communication almost immediately after a leak to The Washington Times. This made it much more difficult for the National Security Agency to intercept his conversations." There was a footnote to the newspaper article. Lee H. Hamilton, the vice chairman of the commission, mentioned the consequences of the article in a speech last month. He said: "Leaks, for instance, can be terribly damaging. In the late 90's, it leaked out in The Washington Times that the U.S. was using Osama bin Laden's satellite phone to track his whereabouts. Bin Laden stopped using that phone; we lost his trail." In their 2002 book, "The Age of Sacred Terror" (Random House), Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin, who worked at the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton, also mentioned the incident. They wrote, "When bin Laden stopped using the phone and let his aides do the calling, the United States lost its best chance to find him." More details about the use of satellite phones by Mr. bin Laden and his lieutenants were revealed by federal prosecutors in the 2001 trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan of four men charged with conspiring to bomb two American embassies in East Africa in 1998. Asked at the outset of his news conference about unauthorized disclosures like the one last week that the National Security Agency had conducted surveillance of American citizens, Mr. Bush declared: "Let me give you an example about my concerns about letting the enemy know what may or may not be happening. In the late 1990's, our government was following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone. And the fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result of a leak. And guess what happened? Osama bin Laden changed his behavior. He began to change how he communicated." Toward the end of the news conference, Mr. Bush referred again to this incident to illustrate the damage caused by leaks. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 If these beltway leakers and spinmeisters had a son or daughter in Iraq, I wonder if they might be a little more discreet in their ramblings and OPSEC conscious. I guess they don't give a damn about the sons and daughters of others. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2005-12-20 21:56 |
| #1 |
| Posted by: DMFD 2005-12-20 21:24 |