Wow.
A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.
Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.
The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network. "Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless," said Rita Katz, the firm's 44-year-old founder.
In recent years, those of us who question our leaders, want to preserve our Constitution, and believe supporting our troops is more than a bumper sticker slogan have been vilified, attacked, and consistently called "traitors" by this administration, their supporters, and their allies in government and media.
(via Propeller)
But when powerful Bush administration officials leak classified information to further their own personal political agenda, the self-appointed defenders of the American way of life fall conspicuously silent.
I used to be outraged by this sort of thing, but now it just makes me sad. What happened to my country?