"There was no hacking involved at all," says William McCants, a jihadi research analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a research and development center serving the Navy. "They [the State Department team] overtly message on non-jihadi forums that anybody can sign up for. They represent themselves as a member of the US government. By law they have to identify themselves."Not covertly hacking. Counter-advertising.
The State Department's Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications was set up about a year and a half ago with the goal of doing better at countering Al Qaeda propaganda and recruiting efforts that occur on public forums across the Internet, which is located at the State Department offices but includes representatives of many other branches of the US government.
Daniel Benjamin, coordinator for counterterrorism at the State Department who won Clinton's backing, was an early backer of the center, he says. President Obama in September issued a directive formally establishing the center and laying out its mission.
So now that you know who started it, you can appreciate its real purpose was to provide bragging rights for the re-election.
"The challenge was that for so long the
In the specific instance mentioned by Clinton, Al Qaeda supporters apparently posted a picture of coffins holding US servicemen -- draped with American flags and prepared to be loaded onto a cargo airplane, according to McCants. The message bragged about how many Americans Al Qaeda had killed.
What the State Department did was to run a counter message with a similar picture -- but with the coffins draped with Yemeni flags and noting how many Yemenis the terrorist group had killed -- the flags apparently Photoshopped onto the picture.
Clever, eh? High-tech hacking? No.