Why does the White House get the OBL videos first?

[Bluebear]

I see they get to "analyze" them for a spell before we (just unimportant Americans) get to see them. Does bin Laden just email the video to Bush? Or does "al Qaeda" leave a tape behind the condiment bar at a KFC in Pakistan for someone to recover? Is the video posted on an "extremist Islamic website" first? And what is the url of this supposed "extremist Islamic website" to which they are always referring? And is it too "tinfoil" to ask these legitimate questions?

Seriously, what is the transmission mechanism that they expect us to believe happens when Puff Daddy releases his new video?

[Warren Stupidity]

1. I'd like an answer to that as well.

[TheDebbieDee]

29. Why does the White House get the OBL videos first?

Because the OBL video tapes are produced in the White House basement by White House staffers, that's why!

[Vincardog]

47. EGGZACTLY

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. SOP for intelligence handling

and it would not matter who was in charge and at the White House

This should be quite self aparent

To use a comparison that the Right likes to use... but in this case they are correct

You think average americans got field reports in WW II first, or where those reports first sent to the WH and they only released what they felt was relevant to the press?

And god, I do feel silly to have to explain this

[Bluebear]

3. 'And god, I do feel silly to have to explain this' - so it's a stupid question, pardon me.

You also never answered the question. I am not saying they shouldn't look at "intelligence" first, but how is it that George gets it first? You would think OBL would want to speak to the American people directly as he claims. Sorry for asking.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. Last time I checked George is still the President

how he gets it first, SIGINT (Signals Intelligence)

Unless you make a habbit of trolling Al Jazeera, which has had them scooped first a copuple times, the US Media will defer to the White House.

[Bluebear]

13. 'the US Media will defer to the White House.' Well, that goes without saying.

:)

Thanks for the explanation on the other thread, too, very clear now.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. You welcome

After 9.11 I went, why?

So I started readying voratiously about Afghani History and the rest of it

And I still remember that fight between ABC news and the gov'ment

In reality, given that we could all get the darn things out of the Al Jazeera site as they are released, in an ideal world they would not be classified on a need to know... until they release them

I figure the reason why they are not keeong them is they know the net is still open and you too could access Al Jazeera

For the tin foil... once they close the web... these tapes will not see the day light unless they can use them

[Warren Stupidity]

31. You are sort of missing the point here.

Lets take a look at this from another perspective. You are a member of Al Kader's Big Band Ministry of Disinformation and Propaganda and you are going to release a HOT new Osamam Video. Your intention is to get this out untampered by the Evil Crusader Governments to as wide an audience as possible. Following so far?

So your basic plan is to produce umpteen copies of this video and deliver it to as many separate outlets as possible. Which you are doing presumably when one or more copies fall into the hands of the Evil Crusader Governments. But you made umpteen copies and umpteen - N are now virally making their way around the internets.

So why exactly is OBL not on youtube at the same time that those corrupt lihopping bastards in the white house are busy analyzing his latest effort?

[helderheid]

32. exactly. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. You do know radical websites crashed

You have a website?

Here a technical explanation that may or may not make sense to you

I can upload to the site my next release... but I don't have to make it go live until I am ready for

Now for the NSA getting into the website (Yes hacking) and getting the video and crashing the site at the same time is a training exericse.. and well within their capabilities, mind you

The websites they were going to use, crashed...

I'd say the boys at NSA had a good training day.

I know many are trying to figure ways on how evil Karl got his cousin larry to stand in for UBL so we could keep Muricans scared shitless... but reality is Al Qaida does exists and it would love to hurt us badly. What they are doing is not that brilliant... after all their equivalent to I-Phone placement are just plain out funny. But what they are doing follows an MO going back to the 1960s and the Muslim Brotherhood

I have said this before, but unless you are trained in technical analysis, your changes of telling if this is the real Osama are next to nil

Do an exercise to see what I mean. Take photos of your face under different lightning conditions. Anybody who does any art can tell you even the slightest change in light can mean changes in perceived shapes of noses and eyes, for example.

Oh and this time they went for a viral release, perhaps Al Jazeerah told them no?

[Warren Stupidity]

46. Not just websites and it was days.

youtube didn't crash. Deliver the thing to 40 media outlets as well. Instead our government announces the release.

[nadinbrzezinski]

49. They got them before they could

why?

Al Qaida is as much into symbols and aniversarie as these boys

Easy to predict

The release has evolved from trying hard to leak it to ABC news, on the first aniversary, to leaking it to Al Jazeera to this

Perhaps next year and yes they will release it next year too, they will simply upload to YouTube and a miriad of other publicly accessible websites

Oh and next year, we will be having this discusion again, after all, only our government is capable of being bad actors in the world and producing this shit. :sarcasm:

[TankLV]

21. Excuse us - I certainly didn't know that - and THIS IS IN NO WAY SHAPE OR FORM LIKE WWII.

There is no reason for the "government" to censore anything...ESPECIALLY things like this...

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. It is still an intelligence matter

now if you go troll Al Jazeera and your arab is good, you can get them at the same time as our SIGINT people do

After all they do release them to a news bureau, Al Jazeera

[Venus Dog]

4. It's not tinfoil to use your God-given common sense

Don't believe your lying eyes and ears otherwise you'll be labeled an extremist or conspiratorialist. Of course, it's all crap. Who would believe anything these people say or do? The unfortunate part is that through their corruption and thievery have been able to steal elections, get into positions of power and now have control over U.S. military - that's where it gets scary.

[Disturbed]

5. The CIA or DOD sends these tapes to the WH first.

this is standard.

[Bluebear]

6. So bin Laden marks his envelope "CIA, Washington DC"?

[whistle]

7. The deal is when the Madison Avenue PR firm finishes the rushes

...they send them direct to the White House

[BlooInBloo]

9. Are you asking why those charged with maintaining security get video...

... related to security before everyone else?

Am I missing something here?

[Bluebear]

11. yes, you certainly are missing something here....

Of course "intelligence" reaches the WH first, but why is this intelligence?

The question was how bin Laden GETS it to us. If as he claimed he wants to speak to Americans first, why would he not send it to a news bureau? Could the news bureau broadcast it legally without the WH "analyzing" it first? It's just the mechanism that I am questioning.

[BlooInBloo]

14. Ah! I gotcha now.

[Bluebear]

19. nadin explained it well to me here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1764333#1764458

[BlooInBloo]

20. Well there you go. :)

[rurallib]

10. Look, they are paying Bin Laden. They should get first look.

[johnnie]

12. They have a gold membership to Netflix

That's the only reason I can think of.

[SeattleGirl]

15. I don't know, but it is interesting that the WH always gets the tapes

first.

[StarryNite]

16. I think the White House

could be considered the movie producer. Which means...

According to guild guidelines, a producer exercises decision-making authority in one or more of four areas of filmmaking -- development, pre-production, production and post-production/marketing.

http://www.themovieblog.com/archives/2005/02/ever_wonder_what_a_producer_is.html

[Vinca]

17. They need to be sure they got the make-up right. They overdid

it a little on the hair dye, but what's a White House production company to do when September 11 is just a few days away and General Petraeus is in town to be grilled?

[TankLV]

22. The WH certainly overdid the "Hair Club for Men" a bit...

A beard gets GREYER with age, and I'm sure ol' bin forgottin doesn't use beard dye...

[Venus Dog]

18. If bin Laden was such a "radical"

wouldn't he want to release the tape to the masses first - the great American unwashed?

Why would he send it directly to the CIA/gov't who he says he is in war with and if these guys are such geniuses they can plot the biggest high-jacking ever, then why can't they hack into Time-Warner cable and release the video during primetime TV. Now that would be a really revolutionary! This, however, is simply ridiculous and laughable.

[Fridays Child]

23. Early information indicated that the tape would be released to a radical Islamist web site...

...within seventy-two hours. That was a couple of days ago and that's exactly how it was explained by the news media. If what they reported was accurate, this tape was not, first, going to a regular news bureau, putting it under the possible control of the U.S. government. It was, instead, supposed to debut on the World Wide Web, making it available to anyone with an Internet connection.

So, with all due respect to nadinbrzezinski, the mechanisms by which the U.S.government manages to obtain and review intelligence before the public sees it are insufficient to explain how the White House was able to get this tape first.

[Disturbed]

27. The WH gets these tapes first because they are produced by

a group that has been outsourced by the Busholini Regime.

[Fridays Child]

28. I'm thinking that what you're saying, or some variation thereof, is correct.

[malaise]

26. Because Osama is their best PR agent

Isn't it funny that Osama shows up just before the 2004 elections and suddenly appears just when Bush needs him. Fugg these lies. It's all Bushit.
Add.

[Vidar]

30. Produced in the White House basement most likely

[leftofthedial]

33. because they are the ones who commissioned them

[Emit]

34. As-Sahab initially put up a still image of the video on some militant website

Still doesn't answer how the video was dispersed from there, and who transcribed it:

Method of delivery
Previously al Qaeda preferred to deliver its videos via a dead-drop method using couriers. However, the method of delivery was changed in January 2005 after a U.S. air raid on an al Qaeda meeting near Damadola, Pakistan. The current method of delivery, which appears to be handled by As Sahab, is an internet delivery of video or audio materials.<1>


2007 Osama bin Laden video
Main article: 2007 Osama bin Laden video
On September 6, 2007, Osama bin Laden's image was posted at a banner advertisement on an Islamic militant Web site where Al-Sahab posts messages. In the image, bin Laden's beard had been dyed, a popular practice among Arab leaders. Al-Sahab said that bin Laden will release a new video ahead of the 6th anniversary of the September 11 attacks which will be the first new images in 3 years.<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As-Sahab

[Emit]

37. Also, what is The SITE Intelligence Group? That's who apparently found the video

by monitoring Islamic extremist websites but I'm not finding much info on them.

[Emit]

38. According to this website's article, here's SITE's website, but

Photographs of Abubakar and Khadaffy Janjalani and Abu Sayyaf members training in what appeared a jungle location were also posted on the SITE Intelligence website and can be accessed on this URL: http://siteintelligence.org/.

http://zamboangajournal.blogspot.com/2007/08/rp-troops-launch-new-offensive-in-jolo.html

But, when you click the link, there's nada there.

What and who is this SITE Intelligence Group who keeps accessing these videos? Is it a private firm, government agency, etc.?

[Emit]

40. Here's SITE's website -- and info about them

http://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 several 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 received his Master's Degree in International Relations, concentrating in Middle East Studies, at Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS).

[Emit]

41. More info on SITE, Search for International Terrorist Entities

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.

~snip~

“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.

Long Article: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/29/060529fa_fact

[Emit]

42. Here's info on the woman who runs SITE

“What makes Rita unique is her background,” Peter Probst, a terrorism consultant and retired C.I.A. officer who works with Katz, told me. “Because of what she’d been through, she understood the threat earlier and better than most of us.”

Katz was born in Basra, Iraq, in 1963, one of four children of a wealthy Jewish businessman. In 1968, in the wake of the Six-Day War, the Baath government, with Saddam Hussein as its head of security, encouraged attacks against Iraqi Jews. Some Jews from prominent families were arrested and charged with spying for Israel, among them Katz’s father. After he was imprisoned, his wife and children were transported to Baghdad and kept under house arrest in a stone hut. Katz’s father was convicted in a military tribunal and executed, in 1969, with eight other Jews and five non-Jews, in a public hanging in Baghdad’s central square. Hundreds of thousands of cheering Iraqis attended; the government offered free transportation to people from the provinces, and belly dancers performed for the crowd. Katz was six years old.

After the family had been living in the hut for months, Katz’s mother drugged the guards and escaped with the children. By pretending to be the wife of a well-known Iraqi general, a woman she faintly resembled, she got the family first to the Iranian border and then to Israel. They settled in a small seaside town called Bat-Yam. Katz did her military service in the Israel Defense Forces after high school, and studied politics and history at Tel Aviv University. She married a medical student, and went into business with her mother, manufacturing clothes; Katz handled sales. In 1997, Katz’s husband won a fellowship to do research in endocrinology at the National Institutes of Health, and they moved to Washington with their three children. (They later had a fourth.)

The particulars of her biography—her father’s execution, her escape from Iraq, and her education in Israel—give Katz, in the eyes of some in the counterterrorism community, a kind of bionic character, as if she had been designed to hunt down terrorists. Her friends and allies are awed by her background; her critics find in it reason to be suspicious of her motives. Katz claims to attach no special meaning to it. “I would have to think about that,” she said, when I asked her if her early life had made her particularly sensitive to the terrorist threat. Later, she told me, “I know that the people who killed my father aren’t the same as the jihadis, but obviously I would never have got interested in the politics of this part of the world if it weren’t for his execution.” (She also said, “When you grow up in a place like Iraq, you understand maybe a little bit about how Arabs think, and also what they are capable of.”)

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/05/29/060529fa_fact

[Emit]

51. Muslim Women File Complaint with DOJ Against Israeli Lobby, Rita Katz, etc.

Posted by Carroll at January 18, 2007 01:07 AM

~snip~

Muslim Women File Complaint with DOJ Against Israeli Lobby

Friday, January 12, 2007, the National Association of Muslim American Women (NAMAW) filed a formal complaint with the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, Criminal Section, and also with the Executive Office for the United States Attorneys at the US Department of Justice. The complaint alleges that as a result of misleading and false information provided to US law enforcement agencies, the media and also to various governmental bodies, various Jewish organizations and individuals have sought to create an environment in the US that is hostile towards US Muslims, resulting in the deprivation, and violation of Muslim civil liberties and civil rights.

The complaint lists the American-Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC), American Jewish Committee (AJC), Anti-Defamation League (ADL), American Jewish Congress B’nai B’rith, the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, and individuals such as Daniel Pipes, Steven Emerson, Rita Katz, Steven Schwartz, Evan Kohlman, and others.


~snip~

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:Yqy4a_u5Z9sJ:www.thewashingtonnote.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi%3Fentry_id%3D1879+iran+policy+committee+rita+katz&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=46&gl=us

[Babsbrain]

35. Can anyone prove that it is posted on Islamic sites?

and not on the CIA Islamic sites....real ones.

[Beelzebud]

39. The producer always gets to see the dailies before anyone else. It's their money on the line.

[Jim Sagle]

43. The WH didn't GET those vids, the WH MADE those vids.

[Emit]

44. See posts 40-42 re: SITE and Katz

Seems like SITE finds these videos first and then contacts WH/US Government with info.

Here's an interview with Katz on NRO:


(Katz has written articles for NRO)

Katz: I do work with government agencies on counterterrorism investigations, but this is not a sign of the government's shortcomings. On the contrary, this is a very positive development. As I describe in the book, my research is based mostly on public records: old publications, tax documents, trial transcripts, and so on. I compile the information I find, I connect the dots, and then give my conclusions as leads to the government. As I have studied many Islamic terrorist organizations, their front groups, and their financiers in great depth, and as I understand their mentality and their language well, I could assist the government in such investigations. However, I do not provide "intel" information per se. The government gets its intel by recording, wiretapping, surveillance, etc. Before 9/11, I tried to give the government important leads, but many of these leads weren't taken seriously. These same leads of mine, and, of course, many others, were picked up by the government after 9/11 — and a large number of investigations stemmed from them.

http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory062603.asp

[Emit]

45. "Rita Katz, SITE and Bin Laden "

http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/09/rita-katz-site-and-bin-laden.html

Others are curious about SITE, too. In the comment section at the link, it says MEMRI and SITE's domains registered with the same company?

[Emit]

48. Apparently, IntelCenter was the second group that first found this video

The advertisement was first found on the Web by two U.S. groups that monitor terror messages, the SITE Institute and IntelCenter.

http://www.plnewsforum.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/23175/P0/

Who is the "Intelcenter" that releases the "Al Qaeda" tapes? (mountain view)

IntelCenter is a US company founded in 1993. Ben N. Venzke serves as the company's CEO. It's stated purpose is to "study terrorist groups and other threat actors and disseminating that information in a timely manner to those who can act on it. We look at capabilities and intentions, warnings and indicators, operational characteristics and a wide variety of other points in order to better understand how to interdict terrorist operations and reduce the likelihood of future attacks."

Terrorist Media

April 2006: A video featuring Qaeda operative Ayman al-Zawahiri, in which he said the US military had "seen only 'loss, disaster and misfortune' in Iraq", "was first obtained by IntelCenter".<1>.
In June 2006, a video of "20th hijacker" Fawaz al-Nashimi, who died in a shootout in Saudi Arabia in 2004, was released by IntelCenter".<2>
On 30 September 2006, IntelCenter made available an 18-minute Al-Qaeda tape in which Al-Zawahiri called Bush "a deceitful charlatan".<3>.
On 2 October 2006, IntelCenter and Venzke were again referenced as a source in an article detailing a silent Al Qaeda video recently released in which two 9/11 hijackers, Muhammad Atta, and Zaid Al-Jarrah, read their last will and testaments<4>.
On 4 July 2007, an al-Zawahiri video was provided by al-Qaeda's As-Sahab Media to IntelCenter. <5> Another US-based intelligence group, SITE, "said it had obtained the tape ahead of its release on the internet by militant web sites".<6> The video was "first reported by IntelCenter and SITE".

The Pearlman tape was once again obtained by the IntelCenter group, a U.S. government contractor, and it's head Ben Venzke has given the tape credence in media interviews concerning the story.
In our previous groundbreaking expose, we unveiled the ties between Intelcenter, a group that regularly 'obtains' Al-Qaeda tapes and the Pentagon.
Intelcenter is an offshoot of IDEFENSE, which was staffed by a senior military psy-op intelligence officer Jim Melnick, who has worked directly for Donald Rumsfeld.

Intelcenter were behind the October 2006 release of the "laughing hijackers" tape that showed Mohammad Atta and Ziad Jarrah allegedly attending a 2000 Al-Qaeda meeting and reading their last will and testament.

Segments of the video that were interspersed with footage of the "laughing hijackers," Jarrah and Atta, showing Bin Laden giving a speech to an audience in Afghanistan on January 8 2000, were culled from what terror experts described as surveillance footage taken by a "security agency."

~snip~

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/pol/416670197.html

[Vanje]

50. because the videos were made in the basement of the Whitehouse?

or maybe in Cheney's bunker?