10 October 2007

Disclosure



Leaks are part of life here. The back bathroom at my place at Big Pink has been a traditional problem. It is just a shower stall, with quotation pink tile in the 1960s manner. It dos not have the tremendous pressure of the one located above the tub in the real bath, and the controls are finicky.

One eight of an inch, one way or another, and you can go from freezing to scalding. I only use it when there are guests in the house and I defer to their needs. Since I use it so seldom, it came as a surprise that the seal on the drain had been breached, and my soapy water was gradually seeping into the plaster ceiling of the fellow who owns the unit one floor down.

It was unfortunate the way the moisture collected, and that his ceiling collapsed in muddy white plaster all over his sink and commode. But that is the effect of a leak, I suppose, and I find myself looking up in the bathroom more than I used to, looking for bulges.

The White House is another source of leaks, though it is institutional rather than a function of the drains. It is certainly not the only source, of course. There are two leaks that are most curious. They are both about things from the Middle East, and the great struggle that is in progress.

The White House leak concerned the most recent Osama bin Ladin videotape. It was big news that the lanky mass-murderer chose to address the West, since he hadn't seen fit to talk to us in almost three years. The other leak is about the continuing story of how the Israelis whacked the Syrians from the air back in September.

No one is talking about the strike, not officially, but how they came and went unscathed reportedly has Iran quivering in apprehension, and some Russian air defense technicians dropping their tools and getting on flights back home.

The White House leak is the most embarrassing, since it means the loss of a sensitive source of information. Rita Katz is the person who got burned by the amateurs. She is a fascinating woman; the short story of her life was subject of an extended article in the New Yorker last year.

The short version is this: Rita has traveled far. She has journeyed across time and space, from Iraqi refugee of Saddam to Israeli housewife, then morphing to become a hunter of terrorists from her adopted home in America.

She does it in person, and now that she is well known, mostly from the net. She runs a private intelligence organization known as SITE, short for the Search for International Terrorist Entities. It is a boutique market, but one that has taken off big time since 9/11.
In the queer asymmetric world of the jihadis, the internet has become the command-and-control means of choice, replacing coded messages and desperate couriers.

It is very much like Lenin's ironic comment about the bankers of the West, and the noose with which he intended to hang them.

He had no idea that they would loan him the money to buy the rope.

Likewise, the Department of Defense begat the internet, and the internet begat the pass-word protected chat-rooms and instant messages that the terrorists use for decentralized command and control of their world-wide operations.

Rita is in the business of tracking the bad guys on the net; her fluency in Arabic is the coin by which she gains admittance. She copies what the earnest fighters and wannabees say to one another, transcribes the training manuals for bombs and wild target schemes, and provides them to her customers in business and the government.

She managed to snag a copy of Osama's video on one of the protected web sites days ahead of the intended release date, which could have been the anniversary of 9/11. She provided it to the White House and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) as a gesture of good will, on the provision that it remain confidential.

Her motivation is either pure or not, depending on what you think of her work, but what happened next is the embarrassing part.

According to press reports, the video was immediately downloaded by dozens of computers in the Pentagon and the intelligence community, and it was on Fox News by the afternoon cycle.

Rita complained bitterly to the Washington Post later, since she says that once the jihadis realized they were compromised, all the URL's that SITE monitors began to wink off in rapid succession. It will take years to get back the access she had, if ever.

It was lost due to bungling and self-aggrandizement by the Administration and amatuer hour at the NCTC.

Maybe true, and maybe not. Sometimes leaks are for the purpose of misdirection, insiders turning things upside-down and outside-in for purposes known only to themselves.

But in this case, I think I agree with Ms. Katz. The damage done by eager beavers seeking a momentary blip of fame has destroyed billions or dollars worth of technical intelligence penetration.

It takes so long to get into something, and it is so easy to be caught and thrown out.

That is what is so very curious about the other leak, the one about the electronic countermeasures that may have allowed the Israeli F-15s to streak across Syrian skies, invisible, and to cause the Iranians to freak out about the prospects for a raid on their nuclear sites. The development of that capability undoubtedly cost the US Taxpayers a lot of cash- and the disclosure of it may turn it into additional billions dumped out the window.

But more about that tomorrow. I have had guests here at Big Pink, and using the back bathroom to be polite. The guy downstairs is banging on his ceiling. He seems to be trying to get my attention.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Close Window