Did the CIA Just Run an Intel Operation on the Daily Beast?

[MinM]

[link: https://twitter.com/firetomfriedman/status/365177221251465217|@firetomfriedman:] @EliLake got played by his anonymous sources, but you gotta love his passion...

Did the CIA Just Run an Intel Operation on the Daily Beast?

Today the Daily Beast reported that an intercepted conference call between “more than 20 al Qaeda operatives” led nearly two dozen U.S. embassies scattered across Southwest Asia and North Africa to shut down over the weekend, a precautionary measure that American officials later extended through August 10. Based on testimony from three unnamed U.S. officials, reporters Eli Lake and Josh Rogin say al Qaeda lieutenants in Nigeria, Uzbekistan, Egypt and Islamic Maghreb discussed vague plans of attack with al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri and the terrorist group’s Yemeni leader, Nasser al-Wuhayshi. One of the unnamed officers compared the call to a meeting of the "Legion of Doom."

Within hours of publication, however, a bevy of national security journalists began casting doubts on the leaked information contained within the Beast’s report. Two theories were quickly born. Adam Goldman of the Associated Press wondered if the leak was manufactured to protect human intelligence (that is, a leaker within al Qaeda), while Ken Delanian of the Los Angeles Times suggested that it was intended to glorify the NSA’s signals intelligence capabilities at a politically vulnerable moment. Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, meanwhile, failed to see how the entire story — the leak, the method of intercept, and the contents of the call — added up...

http://gawker.com/did-the-cia-just-run-an-intel-operation-on-the-daily-be-1053894578

[rocktivity]

1. Well, duh.

This idea of a 20-member international AQ all-star conference call is about as plausible as Jose Padilla's AQ job application!


rocktivity

[BlueStreak]

5. :) I can only imagine what the CIA put into that doctored document

Qualifications: I really hate the Great Satan

Relevant experience: I once worked as a shoe cobbler.

etc.

It is getting to the point that you should not believe anything the government says.

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. GETTING to the point????????

Way way way past the point
depending on how long one has been awake and aware.

[CJCRANE]

2. It's already been revealed that they intercepted

a call by al-Zawahiri so that's not new.

As for the whole conference call thing that is actually possible now with social networking. I found a jihadi group on a popular social networking site, totally out in the open, that helped to link up jihadis from different parts of the world.

Of course that makes it easier to monitor them but I also think it helps to encourage these links to form more easily than they did in the past.

[BlueStreak]

3. Do you even know what jihad means?

It means something on the order of "person struggle", "personal challenge", or "life goal", or "struggle to overcome sins". The Muslim faith challenges people to have their jihads. The normal sense of the word has nothing to do with terrorism. People duscussing jihad "out in the open" is about as noteworthy as people discussing their yoga class.

[CJCRANE]

4. Not when they are talking about the civil war in Syria and Mali

and promoting the same in other countries and posting pictures of jihadis and mujahideen in combat gear.

[BlueStreak]

6. Do you have a link to that?

[CJCRANE]

7. I've reported it

to the relevant authorities.

I'd rather not link to it.

The group is not located in America or concerned with American politics directly. It's more about encoraging these things in muslim countries. It's also a religious site that discusses religion so that maybe how they get away with it. I used google translate to understand most of it.

It just makes me angry that social networking sites clamp down on some things and not others. Obviously there is freedom of speech but social networks do have a duty to monitor what their websites are being used for.

[BlueStreak]

8. OK. Sounds reasonable.