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-----------------
Clas
"Singolare il fatto che uno che critica il tempo perso da Clas sui NG
perda del tempo a raccogliere del materiale su di lui."
cit. Symbel"

 frase:
"Sei felice o no se tua moglie fa un pompino a Berlusconi?
Gradirei una risposta, grazie."

Pallista Goebbels ti fa un baffo se si parla di disinformazione. Guarda
un pò che scrive il Washington Post. La notizia che dai è FALSA
peggio un mito urbano. E la cosa peggiore è che tu lo sapevi e per
questo ti sei limitato a riportare le prime parole. Disinformazione
allo stato puro, vergogna.
Complimenti.
E ANDIAMO AVANTI
File the Bin Laden Phone Leak Under 'Urban Myths'
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 22, 2005; Page A02
President Bush asserted this week that the news media published a U.S.
government leak in 1998 about Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite
phone, alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and
prompting him to abandon the device.
The story of the vicious leak that destroyed a valuable intelligence
operation was first reported by a best-selling book, validated by the
Sept. 11 commission and then repeated by the president.
A leak alerted Osama bin Laden to telephone surveillance, according to
President Bush and others. (AP)
But it appears to be an urban myth.
The al Qaeda leader's communication to aides via satellite phone had
already been reported in 1996 -- and the source of the information was
another government, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan at the time.
The second time a news organization reported on the satellite phone,
the source was bin Laden himself.
Causal effects are hard to prove, but other factors could have
persuaded bin Laden to turn off his satellite phone in August 1998. A
day earlier, the United States had fired dozens of cruise missiles at
his training camps, missing him by hours.
Bush made his assertion at a news conference Monday, in which he
defended his authorization of warrantless monitoring of communications
between some U.S. citizens and suspected terrorists overseas. He fumed
that "the fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was
using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result
of a leak." He berated the media for "revealing sources, methods and
what we use the information for" and thus helping "the enemy" change
its operations.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Monday that the president
was referring to an article that appeared in the Washington Times on
Aug. 21, 1998, the day after the cruise missile attack, which was
launched in retaliation for the bombings of two U.S. embassies in
Africa two weeks earlier. The Sept. 11 commission also cited the
article as "a leak" that prompted bin Laden to stop using his satellite
phone, though it noted that he had added more bodyguards and began
moving his sleeping place "frequently and unpredictably" after the
missile attack.
Two former Clinton administration officials first fingered the Times
article in a 2002 book, "The Age of Sacred Terror." Daniel Benjamin and
Steven Simon wrote that after the "unabashed right-wing newspaper"
published the story, bin Laden "stopped using the satellite phone
instantly" and "the United States lost its best chance to find him."
The article, a profile of bin Laden, buried the information about his
satellite phone in the 21st paragraph. It never said that the United
States was listening in on bin Laden, as the president alleged. The
writer, Martin Sieff, said yesterday that the information about the
phone was "already in the public domain" when he wrote the story.
A search of media databases shows that Time magazine had first reported
on Dec. 16, 1996, that bin Laden "uses satellite phones to contact
fellow Islamic militants in Europe, the Middle East and Africa."
Taliban officials provided the information, with one official --
security chief Mulla Abdul Mannan Niazi -- telling Time, "He's in high
spirits."
The day before the Washington Times article was published -- and the
day of the attacks -- CNN producer Peter Bergen appeared on the network
to talk about an interview he had with bin Laden in 1997.
He communicates by satellite phone, even though Afghanistan in some
levels is back in the Middle Ages and a country that barely functions,"
Bergen said.
Bergen noted that as early as 1997, bin Laden's men were very concerned
about electronic surveillance. "They scanned us electronically," he
said, because they were worried that anyone meeting with bin Laden
"might have some tracking device from some intelligence agency." In
1996, the Chechen insurgent leader Dzhokhar Dudayev was killed by a
Russian missile that locked in to his satellite phone signal.
A leak alerted Osama bin Laden to telephone surveillance, according to
President Bush and others. (AP)
That same day, CBS reported that bin Laden used a satellite phone to
give a television interview. USA Today ran a profile of bin Laden on
the same day as the Washington Times's article, quoting a former U.S.
official about his "fondness for his cell phone."
It was not until Sept. 7, 1998 -- after bin Laden apparently stopped
using his phone -- that a newspaper reported that the United States had
intercepted his phone calls and obtained his voiceprint. U.S.
authorities "used their communications intercept capacity to pick up
calls placed by bin Laden on his Inmarsat satellite phone, despite his
apparent use of electronic 'scramblers,' " the Los Angeles Times
reported.
Officials could not explain yesterday why they focused on the
Washington Times story when other news organizations at the same time
reported on the satellite phone -- and that the information was not
particularly newsworthy.
"You got me," said Benjamin, who was director for counterterrorism on
the National Security Council staff at the time. "That was the
understanding in the White House and the intelligence community. The
story ran and the lights went out."
Lee H. Hamilton, vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, gave a
speech in October in which he said the leak "was terribly damaging."
Yesterday, he said the commission relied on the testimony of three
"very responsible, very senior intelligence officers," who he said
"linked the Times story to the cessation of the use of the phone." He
said they described it as a very serious leak.
But Hamilton said he did not recall any discussion about other news
outlets' reports. "I cannot conceive we would have singled out the
Washington Times if we knew about all of the reporting," he said.
A White House official said last night the administration was confident
that press reports changed bin Laden's behavior. CIA spokesman Tom
Crispell declined to comment, saying the question involves intelligence
sources and methods.
On Leaks, Relying on A Faulty Case Study
Untrue Bin Laden Satellite Phone Story Still Has Currency With Media's
Critics
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A03
The allegation that news organizations leaked information about Osama
bin Laden's satellite phone, thus shutting down a valuable source of
intelligence that might have prevented the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has
long been a prime case study cited by government officials seeking to
impose greater restrictions on the news media.
President Bush drew attention to the case Monday when he twice cited it
as a dangerous example of the news media "revealing sources, methods
and what we use the information for." Bush was basing his remarks on a
conclusion by the Sept. 11 commission, which had labeled it a "leak"
that prompted the al Qaeda leader to turn off his phone.
Upon closer examination, the story turned out to be wrong. Bin Laden's
use of a satellite phone had already been widely reported by August
1998, and he stopped using it within days of a cruise missile attack on
his training camps in Afghanistan.
Yet in recent years, advocates of new laws that would restrict the
ability of the news media to report on intelligence matters have
repeatedly cited the case of bin Laden's satellite phone as an
especially dangerous example of media malfeasance.
In July, Rep, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House
intelligence committee, gave a speech titled "Secrets and Leaks: the
Costs and Consequences for National Security," in which he highlighted
the bin Laden case. "Were it not for a leak, there is a chance we could
have brought Osama bin Laden to justice by now and have a better
understanding of the al Qaeda operation," said Hoekstra, who is
considering legislation to make it easier to prosecute leakers.
A spokesman for Hoekstra did not return a call seeking comment.
Hoekstra has distributed to lawmakers a classified report on leaks
compiled by James B. Bruce, vice chairman of the CIA's Foreign Denial
and Deception Committee, and a leading advocate of enacting very tough
laws on leaks. In 2002, Bruce was quoted as saying that "we've got to
do whatever it takes -- if it takes sending SWAT teams into
journalists' homes -- to stop these leaks."
Bruce has also repeatedly cited the bin Laden example as he made the
case for new laws to stem leaks, such as making journalists and news
organizations liable for prosecution if they report classified
information or obtain classified documents.
"Important intelligence collection capabilities against Osama bin Laden
and al Qaeda were lost in the several year period leading to 9/11,"
Bruce told the American Bar Association on Nov. 22, 2002, saying the
bin Laden case was "just the tip of the iceberg" of how disclosures
hurt the campaign against terrorism. He did not cite other examples.
Former deputy defense secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz mentioned bin Laden's
phone in September 2002, saying it was an example of how "our
intelligence sources and methods have also been devaluated by a pattern
of leaks from the executive and legislative branches of government and
through a number of well-known espionage cases."
Bruce, who did not respond to an e-mail requesting comment, was a staff
member of the 2005 Robb-Silberman Commission on Intelligence
Capabilities, which included a classified annex that detailed leaks
"that have collectively ...
"