Patterico's Pontifications

5/3/2011

About That Treasure Trove of Intel…

Filed under: General — Aaron Worthing @ 12:33 pm



[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

So another positive story to come out of the killing of bin Laden (and let’s face it, there is so many great things about it), is that we got a big cache of intel from it all.  Via Hot Air, as a work around from Politico:

The assault force of Navy SEALs snatched a trove of computer drives and disks during their weekend raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, yielding what a U.S. official called “the mother lode of intelligence.”

The special operations forces grabbed personal computers, thumb drives and electronic equipment during the lightning raid that killed bin Laden, officials told POLITICO…

Which is nice and all, but…  WHY THE HELL ARE YOU TELLING US THIS?! Are you stupid, insane, or actually treasonous?!

Seriously, listen to these officials talk:

“Hundreds of people are going through it now,” an official said, adding that intelligence operatives back in Washington are very excited to find out what they have.

“It’s going to be great even if only 10 percent of it is actionable,” the official said.

Here’s a hint, dipshit, none of that is actionable, now.  Chances are virtually all of that information can go bad—things like locations of bad guys, assumed names and the like can all be changed if the bad guys know we have that information.  Now if they are smart—and there is good reason to think they aren’t—they might have done that automatically as a precaution when bin Laden was killed. But if any of that information didn’t go bad the moment bin Laden reached room temperature, it went bad the moment word got out.

Seriously, if no one in the Obama administration is angry about this leak, they should be.  And they should find out who blabbed and throw the idiot or idiots in jail.

And, Mike Allen, the reporter, don’t think you are getting off the hook on this.  Did you even once ask if you should publish such sensitive information?

Seriously, this is straight up amateur hour.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

55 Responses to “About That Treasure Trove of Intel…”

  1. Actually, I don’t think this “leak” tells us anything that any semi-intelligent person would not have figured out on his own. We just had a meeting today and were chatting about this during the break, and someone said that, apart from killing bin Laden, we probably grabbed some computers with good intel on them. I mean OBL was the head of the Al Qaida organization, stands to reason he had some juicy files about its members and the operation thereof.

    Bored Lawyer (c8f13b)

  2. Nonetheless, this is not an administration run by adults. Brennan’s embarrassing performance writ large.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  3. If I were running the show, and I DIDN’T find a huge trove of good data, I might say that I did, in the hopes that it would shake up the terrorist community and send some of them scuttling from one hiding place to another.

    But I rarely bet against government incompetence.

    Ken (4b0a79)

  4. Oh, stop it., AW. Even a dim-witted operative would have already suspected that Osama possessed papers/files, and would have assumed we got some intel from the raid. Our “leaking” this information wouldn’t change the dynamics at all.

    In fact, from a psy-op standpoint, it’s probably a good thing to leak the news about the “treasure trove”

    Kman (5576bf)

  5. kman

    Right. So they will probably figure it out, so why not make it a certainty? Btw, way to make an argument i already acknowledged.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  6. “Even a dim-witted operative would have already suspected that Osama possessed papers/files, and would have assumed we got some intel from the raid.”

    Kman – Sure, moron, in a 40 minute raid, nobody would assume there was enough time to destroy any hard drives while a firefight was going on, so we had to announce it to the world.

    I look forward to reading the contents of the captured intelligence in the Sunday Magazine section of the New York Times.

    Next stupid observation.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  7. My shot at a short press release:

    Analysts were surprised not to find computers or other data devices in the compound. Unfortunately, many papers were destroyed during the course of the firefights and breaching of the walls and doors.

    Chuck (3f9a8e)

  8. I am SHOCKED, shocked I tell you, to see that kmart took a reflexively contrarian position.

    JD (306f5d)

  9. Certainly, some official could have expressed regret that there had not been time to search the place. A quite plausible-sounding excuse would have been unexpected time constraints from the helo loss.

    It is almost as though the WH reflexively sought the greatest short term splash and gave no timely thought to the longer term.

    jim2 (a9ab88)

  10. This is petty. Bin Laden’s allies aren’t idiots, and they know we aren’t either. They are going to assume some information was taken anyway; they just wouldn’t know which information. They still don’t know.

    Unless our guys reveal concrete details, this is just harmless cheer-leading, something to remind the rubes how awesome Obama is. It may even help demoralize the enemy for a while.

    roy (d946db)

  11. Look, all the Administration suits (in any Administration) give us plenty of amateur hour, because they’re amateurs. In the worst case, they assume that having a degree from Yale means they don’t need to pay attention and can coast through their jobs. Washington is full of them. The best and the brightest — just ask them. No, don’t bother, just wait, they’ll tell you. And tell you….

    Then, there’s the fact that nobody in the media checks anything, they just throw it up there. There are no consequences for a false report or even a fabricated one (remember Dana Priest and “Jessica Lynch, Amazon Warrior,” a story she made up? She’s still a reporter at the Post, because they want speed and sensation, not accuracy. Priest is what’s most important in her job — a fast typist).

    Most of the stuff in the media about military special operations is garbage. Some of it is made up by those Washington drones who want to impress a reporter with how insidery they are. Or it’s made up to impress a hooker or rent boy, who then throws the tidbit at the reporter to angle for a tip.

    It’s amusing to hear Marc Ambinder lecture us about special ops, too. How’s that gastric bypass working out, Marc? Ready to try out yet? Well, SF and the SEALS are getting by without you… just barely, I’m sure. Give ’em a call when you can fit through the airlock.

    The new media are just as bad. Pajamas Media found an expert to bloviate at length on the raid. His expertise? One tour as a lieutenant in a National Guard infantry company. The only thing a guy like that knows about special ops units is that the three best kids in his platoon tried out and all three failed.

    Anyway, if you read the reports, Osama was shot in the head, chest, twice in the face, blow’d up by a grenade, shot through his wife he was hiding behind, shot through soneone else’s wife he was hiding behind, and for all I know shot in the behind. He was fighting back, running away, shooting an AK47 that was noplace near him. Stack up the stories and they contradict one another, because they’re all made up.

    I get it. People are hungry for information, but understand this: if the source is not named, the reporter probably made it up and there IS no source. Reporters do this all the time. IF there really is a source who refused to be named, it’s because he didn’t know anything and HE made it up. If he didn’t make it up, he’s just passing on hearsay from the guy that DID make it up.

    Even stuff that was released by officials under their own names (notably Brennan, a man who could grow in office for 30 more years without his feet being able to reach the floor from his chair) has been corrected (sometimes stealthily rowed back). If Brennan’s staff didn’t get the correct information to him the first time, it sure isn’t in the hands of the various buffoons self-importantly leaking to various media clowns typing nonsense that might as well be Swahili for all they understand it.

    You may safely assume that people’s willingness to talk to reporters is in inverse proportion to their knowledge of what actually went on. But the reporters can’r resist jamming the story into their pre-written narrative.

    Kevin R.C. O'Brien (b678ff)

  12. Right. So they will probably figure it out, so why not make it a certainty?

    Lots of reasons. Creating panic, for one. Sometimes if you get rats to scurry, they are easier to detect. It also encourages a lack in confidence about AQ, weakening resolve among current members, and making recruitment more difficult (i.e., in the same way that you are unlikely to trust Apple).

    I’m amused at these rather feeble attempts to spin what happened as BAD or AMATUERish for Obama in some way. It’s like some conservatives just can’t let a success be a success, so they are trying to turn it into the Keystone Kops or “Black Hawk Down” or something.

    Give it up.

    Kman (5576bf)

  13. Your concerns are a little overwrought. Bad guys can only do so much to get away from a tide of information about them.

    Was it wise to put word out this quickly on this subject — of course not.

    Is the information likely to be inreparable compromised as a result — probably not.

    shipwreckedcrew (fe3b5b)

  14. It’s amazing how we all view the assumption over and over again that we are dealing with two year old morons all over the WORLD, and if one of our “braindead traitors” states the absolutely OBVIOUS, it’s a breach of national security secrets.
    Of course this infantile attitude that everyone but the genius observing commenter along with his or her moral bona fides in agreement is a retarded drooler makes for the insane opaque quackery we have on every level in this nation, and the dribbling little or no information secretive biased press, and of course, the continuation of every post 911 conspiracy theory known.
    That’s how all the 3rd world nations do it as well – including the middle east – nothing is okay to tell the public, so the government becomes the lying corrupt hell it is, and the populace becomes a crazed tribal warring shout fest.
    We do it so well, with all our brilliant commentators…who know perhaps less than nothing and shriek so should everyone else, lest our enemies REALIZE THE OBVIOUS THAT A TEENAGER IN FEAR OF DISCOVERY EASILY DEDUCES.
    It’s just amazing to me.

    SiliconDoc (7ba52b)

  15. Kmart is nothing if not consistent. Consistently creepy. Consistently contrarian. Consistenly mendoucheous.

    JD (3ad5b9)

  16. Another point I neglected to mention — this is one of those situations where most people who would be interested by the fact that the US forces took with them lots of potentially valuable computer info were aware of that fact prior to the leak getting out there. Many people were left behind at the location, and the Pakistani ISI were there not long after the US forces left. It was likely communicated throughout the AQ network that operational details were likely compromised long before the leak hit the airwaves.

    shipwreckedcrew (fe3b5b)

  17. Many people were left behind at the location, and the Pakistani ISI were there not long after the US forces left. It was likely communicated throughout the AQ network that operational details were likely compromised long before the leak hit the airwaves.

    Good point.

    Kman (5576bf)

  18. 13. The only way to keep a lid on it is not to announce that Bin Laden was killed.
    That’s it fellas. That’s what it requires.
    If any of you really are for stealth and surprise from gleaned information, the actual raid and Osama’s death would have had to be kept secret.
    DUH

    SiliconDoc (7ba52b)

  19. this is one of those situations where most people who would be interested by the fact that the US forces took with them lots of potentially valuable computer info were aware of that fact prior to the leak getting out there.

    I admit, that’s probably true.

    Still, it reeks of trying to show ‘look here! we got this! yay for our politics!’ when it’s national security intelligence. That’s not how Bush did things, and for good reason. We should at the very least carefully process it, and see if this treasure trove had any surprises.

    Also, Osama clearly used a lot of opsec. KSM didn’t know his courier’s name… some guy in Iraq had to be captured to get that. I don’t think we can assume that the left hand knew what the right hand was doing, or that most of Al Qaida knew that Osama Bin Laden was even alive, or what kind of material he had.

    But your ISI point makes sense. And for all I know, we didn’t find anything, and this is a ruse. I hope we’re clever enough to at least send some kind of diversion.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  20. shipwreckedcrew – I would imagine some of the people most concerned about about information taken by the U.S. are the ISI.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  21. Kman – Bringing up Blackhawk Down, a Clinton CIC screw up, will not help your case.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  22. As has been pointed out, the capture of intelligence on this raid was an obvious thing, and the jihadis would assume it even if it was not mentioned by U.S. officials.

    Another point is that since they would be certain that we got intelligence through this strike, it should be played up as much as possible, to provide cover for intelligence we have gotten through any other sources (i.e. informers in or around their organization).

    BTW, I’m less disturbed than I was about the location of the safe house and implied Pakistani complicity in Osama’s conceealment.

    This is a violent Third World country. Any private residence of substance is semi-fortified. Any man of wealth has a retinue of guards for himself and his household, and a residence is private.

    That someone important and protected lived in that house was obvious – but who it was would not be. The person was unknown and more or less in hiding – but he could have been hiding from the Taliban or some hostile tribal clan or political rivals. Next door to Pakistan’s military academy could be a good place for a jihadist target.

    So IMHO there was no public knowledge that Osama was there, and some sort of cover story about the house.

    The U.S. has developed an extremely good HUMINT network in the Pakistani border areas. Bing West commented that Al-Qaeda has a rule in that area that no more than two of them can ever meet in public – they’re that afraid of being spotted and having a Predator come calling.

    Apparently they took particular care with security for Osama and this house – no phone or Internet communications, no visitors, only the one ultra-trusted courier.

    There are reports of possible ISI complicity, which is a problem, but even ISI may have been played with a cover story. There are ISI links to the Taliban, unfortunately. A Taliban contact may have asked for a sanctuary for a supposed Taliban figure who had offended some other faction, or some drug trafficking warlord.

    Rich Rostrom (d34a68)

  23. As has been pointed out, the capture of intelligence on this raid was an obvious thing, and the jihadis would assume it even if it was not mentioned by U.S. officials.

    They would have assumed something, perhaps. It’s best to maintain absolute secrecy, instead of saying ‘hey, we got this computer!!!’ like Gomer Pyle. I don’t think it’s even known how many people knew OBL was alive. And noting that he’s alive, and has lots of computers, tells a lot of his cells something very valuable.

    Remember, KSM didn’t even know Al Kuwaiti’s name. OBL kept info very compartmentalized, and we could have presented the idea we caught him, but he was isolated from the rest of his movement, with no computers.

    At the very least, we should process the intel for a little while before even discussing it. A simple ‘we will not discuss what we found’ is much better than a ‘yay, look at the treasure trove’.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  24. Rich @ 1:35 —

    there are two possibilities.

    1. The Paks knew all along.

    2. The Paks had absolutely no clue.

    If #2 is the case, and It might well be, there’s probably a lot of ISI officers stammering in front of their bosses today.

    If #! is the case, the Pak Army has been throwing away a lot of its own people’s lives fighting the local Taliban. (They’ve suffered far greater losses than the US, and a lot of their casualties have been hapless draftees).

    I’m uncertain which one of the above is true, but it has to be one or the other. (It’s possible that some individual officials knew and kept it from their superiors, for Islam, money or both). I do think that very few people knew exactly who was in there. Osama was naturally in tune with the old Poor Richard’s saying. “three can keep a secret if two are dead.”

    All of the remaining Taliban/Al Q bigs are very skittish and cautious. They have seen what happened to the trusting and reckless ones years ago. It is hard to catch an intelligent man who does not want to be caught (how’s the FBI doing on Whitey Bulger?) Most crooks are dumb. but dumb terrorists walk into a scythe of natural selection.

    Kevin R.C. O'Brien (b678ff)

  25. Lots of guessing about when and what was found. Do we even know for sure Osama’s takedown happened when our govt says it did? What if it happened 2 or more weeks ago and actional material was put to good use before the “last week” anouncement? I know, I’m probably giving the admin too much credit for actual intelligence.

    tmac (5559f7)

  26. If Bin Laden & AQ were even minimum security conscious, there would not be any intel information stored there. Bin Laden was no longer running operations and was removed from the information stream except for long range planning and and briefings. I doubt that any real information wil be found. No phones, no internet, burniong all garbage – does that sound like someone who would maintain a data base on operations & personnel?

    Michael M. Keohane (4e0dda)

  27. I’m kinda over the whole woo hoo bin laden is dead thing but the Harry Potter connection is really really fascinating.

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  28. In a perfect world, I would have liked to see them keep this quiet for a week or so and see what key players in the ISI, the Paki Army, and the Paki Govt say and do.

    I bet they would go nuts wondering if we had Osama alive and what he was saying.

    Osama's Ghost (9cd45b)

  29. It really makes you think you know? It’s like Osama is Voldemort and president bumble is Harry Potter except for bumble doesn’t have an owl or a wand and stuff. But it’s still very similar cause of they both had no daddy and they both smoked a lot of pot and ate a lot of candy.

    happyfeet (a55ba0)

  30. does that sound like someone who would maintain a data base on operations & personnel?

    Comment by Michael M. Keohane

    This is a great point. Perhaps Obama’s administration is lying about the treasure trove of intel.

    And let me be clear, if they didn’t find any, I think they should then say they did find a bunch because that would cause confusion and panic all throughout the organization. They would have to reconnect with eachother (in person in many cases) to revamp their security, since they wouldn’t be as sure what we know about them. We could really capitalize on that, by tracking those we’re already aware of.

    Hell, I can see such a lie combined with a few hits in the coming weeks, as a planned psychological campaign. Al qaida would be too busy dealing with it to attack anyone.

    Pelosi said capturing Osama wouldn’t make America safer, but if Obama handles this correctly, killing him will. Let’s hope Obama is successful in this case.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  31. HOMOPHOBES

    /Jharp

    DohBiden (15aa57)

  32. Oh, hell. If it wasn’t that “unnamed official”, it would have been a Congressman or Senator blabbing it all over town, like Dianne Feinstein did Sunday night before the announcement.

    Remember when nobody knew we were tapping Al Quaeda cell phones? How long did THAT secret last? And what was the result? Bin Laden started using Quicksilver Messenger Service.

    Secrets? In Washington? When legislators are involved in the briefings? Absolutely snortworthy.

    bobdog (166386)

  33. OK, look; I don’t like Obama. I think he’s a good looking idiot who’s in way over his head. But can I ask why we should be taking this information at face value? Maybe Osama bin Hiding managed to torch everything of value before he got his ticket punched. Maybe these camel pesterers have actually managed to isolate one cell from another enough that there wasn’t anything ‘hot’ in the compound. Or maybe we got chapter and verse and are going to be rolling up terrorist operations like carpet for a while. Whatever happened I maintain that it is at least POSSIBLE that (in consultation with advisors who we can hope don’t need help tying their shoes) Obama decided that the way to create the maximum confusion would be to let out that we had a ‘Treasure Trove’.

    It is TOO SOON to be ragging on Obama for this. When it looks like he has dived into a cesspit head first, it behoves us to wait and see if he comes up with a diamond ring in his teeth ….. or a turd.

    C. S. P. Schofield (8b1968)

  34. ecrets? In Washington? When legislators are involved in the briefings? Absolutely snortworthy.

    Comment by bobdog

    Maybe it isn’t. Bush managed to keep the results of his intel seeking very secret. Al qaida didn’t really know much about our interrogation regime until 2009, when all the memos were released.

    Obama’s administration, to their credit, kept this very important mission a complete secret. Whoever in his staff knew about this, didn’t utter a word.

    As you note, the key is keeping as many politicians out of the loop as possible. This is PRECISELY the point of the ‘cheney assassination squad’. That’s what democrats were angry about. Their main gripe was that it operated free of congressional oversight, actually. Obama didn’t heed hope and change on that. Instead, relying on the 2001 AUMF, he greatly increased the scale of operations. A year ago, I believe they said they were bringing the State Department into the loop, but I really doubt that’s the case.

    Kudos to Obama for a good call. I do think this proves a capability for keeping secrets.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  35. It is not so much what intelligence we got, but the fact that they don’t know what has been compromised and what hasn’t. They will pretty much have to assume everything has been compromised and junk everything they can. This is a major setback.

    Huey (65df69)

  36. Kevin R.C. O’Brien sound as if he has had experience dealing with the press. So have I.

    I was in Vietnam in 1971 and 1972 as an F4E weapons systems officer flying out of DaNang. The press protocol was to never speak to them. If they filmed your aircraft taxiing, the front seater would give them the peace sign and the back seater gave them the finger. Above all, you never let them know your name.

    In April 72 the NVA attacked with a conventional force of 200,000 supported by armor and artillery. (Tet was 84,000.) Tactical fighter units from Korea, the Philippines, Okinawa and even stateside deployed to help. Unfortunately, they did not know the press rules.

    One afternoon, after a 4 hour Linebacker sortie, I climbed into the step van, took a cold hand towel out of the ice chest, wrung it out and draped it around my neck. It was better than sex. When I picked up my helmet and looked up, there was a press twit holding a Sony cassette deck and half a steno pad. I brushed past him and sat down as a crew from Kunsan climbed in behind me. The reporter was from Newsweek. I listened to the fools from Korea give him an interview. Three weeks later I read the story. The only part that was accurate where the names of the crew. The clincher was the observation that the pilots had just enough time to drink a cold beer before their next mission.

    My next press confrontation was in 1981 in El Salvador with a now famous Brit newsreader named Jon Snow. Fiction again.

    Never believe anything in the main stream media.

    Arch (24f4f2)

  37. Well lots of the detailed info was going to go stale very quickly no matter what, but look at it this way: now we’ll know a lot more about structures, patterns, ways and methods of doing things, scale, scope, institutional depth, that sort of thing. That stuff is useful in itself: does the dragon have eight wings, or only four? How many teeth in the shark’s mouth?

    And if there’s any Chinese pay stubs in there (which wouldn’t surprise me in the least), that’ll sure be interesting.

    d. in c. (17012e)

  38. “Three may keep a secret – if two are dead” We’re halfway there.

    rls (5e657b)

  39. People perhaps missed it or have already forgotten that the CULTURE of the “tribe” of that city has reportedly been ” NO GIVING UP ANYONE WHO SEEKS HAVEN” – one could perhaps relate it to sanctuary cities here…

    SO WE KNOW THEY KNEW.

    After the press with info from anyone of note declares this – I’m sure they will play along with EVERYONE ELSE who flat out FORGETS that and spews onward with their incredible intellect dissecting every possible scenario of they did or didn’t know…

    I can hardly wait for the weeks, months, and YEARS of the speculation that leaves the most important fact out – EVEN AS THEY KNEW THEY ARE SWORN BY THEIR CULTURE AND RELIGION TO NOT TELL US A DAMN THING PERIOD.

    Golly, that settles it – but to even dream it will is a really, really bad mental embolism.

    SiliconDoc (7ba52b)

  40. 1. #3 has an excellent point and is an old Intel parlor trick.
    2. I understand KMan to be the native troll in these parts–I usually read PW, but figured you all would have interesting things to say about OBL’s crabfood turn–but she/he’s got a point.

    AQ, to the point they retain operational structure (and I understand that to be the case) are virtually assured to understand that the US and its allies are studying captured documents intensely. They are dumb, and often retarded, but they are not totally stupid. They understand that the most important thing the GREAT SATAN hunts for is data.

    3. The likelihood of the US intel apparatus putting out an on-the-record assessment of the value of the cache (if it exists) within 24 hours of the operation that is true are low. The likelihood of the US doing that to foster concern, panic and dissent within the ISI…..yeah, I’ll take that bet.

    Roddy Boyd (825af7)

  41. There is no point in not saying there was intelligence to be had. Anyone in the business would know. Anyone.

    Even me.

    Jack (f9fe53)

  42. That someone important and protected lived in that house was obvious – but who it was would not be. The person was unknown and more or less in hiding – but he could have been hiding from the Taliban or some hostile tribal clan or political rivals. Next door to Pakistan’s military academy could be a good place for a jihadist target.

    Maybe it’s just me, but if I ran a military academy and someone built a large fortified compound just down the street from me, I’d make d*** sure I knew who built it and who was living there. Even if I didn’t tell anyone afterwards.

    Of course, I don’t think like a Pakistani general.

    I don’t think telling everyone we have a huge amount of intel captured on the raid will do any serious hurt. The people most likely to be compromised by that are the upper echelons of AlQaeda, and whoever in Pakistan was involved with hiding OBL (ISI, I’m looking at you), and I think they would know very quickly that we had the information even if we didn’t announce it.

    BTW, if the streaming headlines on CNN are right, Panetta was the leaker, during an interview with a TIME magazine reporter.

    kishnevi (2d88a8)

  43. Kishnevi, you’re right. It’s hard to understate the significance of the potential ISI involvement.

    Now, let’s bear in mind that Pakistan has a lot of blood in this fight. Thousands of Pakistanis have died fighting the Taliban in recent years. It’s a huge population (far more than Iraq or Afghanistan).

    They are not all enemies by any stretch. It’s yet again another country where we have to figure out who our friends are, or we’ll be screwed.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  44. Eh, I’m with the ‘didn’t tell them anything they didn’t already know’ camp. Even if we put out disinformation that we hadn’t had time to search the compound and etc., that doesn’t change the part where the ISI is doing the crime scene walkdown of the site after we left. And we all know that the ISI leaks info like a damn sieve to Al Qaeda.

    So Al Qaeda was soon enough going to find out the full inventory of everything still left in the house after the SEALs were done with it; the instant Osama’s computers are not reported on that list, Al Qaeda would know we had them.

    Chuckg (278480)

  45. chuck

    if it is worthless, why bother at all?

    why put hundreds of analysts on this.

    and no, our enemies are idiots. look at their attempt to take down the eiffel tower. their plan was to say to the pilots “kill yourself or i will kill you.” they’re idiots.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  46. Sometimes if you get rats to scurry, they are easier to detect.

    — Kman, we know where you live!

    Icy Texan (c28ab5)

  47. This is not the same as a WikiLeaks situation, as there have been no detailed public revelations of what information was recovered — BUT, there is something wrong in advertising the fact that anything was recovered at all.

    While it may be safe to assume that al Qaeda would think SOME of its info/intel is now compromised, the use of the term “treasure trove” may indeed lead to Kman’s ‘rats scurrying’ scenario — as in: rats scurrying to new harder-to-find hiding places far from the locations that might be revealed by Osama’s computer files.

    When the British cracked the code to the German “Enigma” machine during WWII they didn’t go crowing about it at a press conference — they kept it a secret while using it to their strategic advantage for as long as possible.

    Osama bin Laden was NOT killed as a result of President Obama standing up at the State of the Union speech and declaring: “We know where he’s hiding, and pretty soon now we’re gonna get him.” Stealth and secrecy won the day. Actionable intelligence — something that has been known ever since Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” — is ALWAYS one of the biggest keys to victory over a military foe.

    Lawrence O’Donnell went NUTS on his show last night, bleating about how stupid we were as a nation for not electing John Kerry in 2004, because Kerry would have treated this as “a job for police work,” conveniently forgetting that it was military intelligence and a military operation that successfully carried out this takedown — and that it was some loose-lipped D.C. idiot that may have diminished the positive impact of this incident by sending Kman’s rats scurrying into deeper cover.

    How does your average al Qaeda cell member — who BY THE VERY NATURE OF WHAT A TERROR CELL IS knows only a portion of the overall plans and structure of the organization to which he belongs (insert Sam Kinison scream here) — look at the death of his leader/figurehead and automatically leap to the conclusion that ALL of his group’s plans and hiding places have been laid bare for the imperialist dogs to use in smashing the organization? Are you sure that he isn’t saying to himself, “Well, it took them 10 years to find our most publicly known member, and he was hiding in plain sight!”

    No. This is a case of the administration hedging its bets. They are talking about these “files” and “computers” in an attempt to deflect from the brutal reality of having just deliberately targeted and killed an individual enemy. It doesn’t sound so harsh if you can say that you found evidence that will lead to the further dissolution of a terror group. But again, by the very nature of how these groups work this revelation will only hasten the abandonment of what were thought to be safe-houses, as well as to cause radical overhauls of any future planned attacks.

    Heckuva job, Barry! Heckuva job.

    Icy Texan (c28ab5)

  48. “In fact, from a psy-op standpoint, it’s probably a good thing to leak the news about the “treasure trove”

    Which clearly indicates that you do not have the slightest idea what the PSYOP MOS entails.

    SPC Jack Klompus (c1922b)

  49. SPC

    bear in mind, Kman is clueless about the law, his chosen profession. he has no chance on issues like this.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  50. That one-dimensional, predictable-as-a-seasonal allergy, Chatty Cathy doll of fill-in-the-blank talking points as dated as avocado rugs in a kitchen is a LAWYER?!

    SPC Jack Klompus (c1922b)

  51. SPC

    hey, be nice. most of the bloggers here are lawyers, too.

    🙂

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)

  52. the instant Osama’s computers are not reported on that list, Al Qaeda would know we had them.

    Again, this simply isn’t true. OBL kept the name of his courier from KSM, remember? It’s obvious that information was highly compartmentalized. Only a tiny handful of people in Al Qaida even knew OBL was alive, and we probably got most of them in the raid. Only a tiny handful knew about his computers.

    Now, it’s not a perfect world, and there’s no perfect way to handle this. I shouldn’t Monday morning quarterback this, and I think this operation was mostly successful and more than satisfactory.

    rather than ankle biting, I’m just observing the consequences. Perhaps it would have been much better not to tell the world exactly what happened for a few weeks. Then, we reveal Osama’s frozen corpse, and a video of the raid, after carefully looking over the intel we got from the site. It’s unlikely that the ISI was frequently checking on OBL. It’s actually likely that this was a high level secret, closely guarded. Remember, finding this guy was extremely hard to do.

    We could even use that to our own advantage, too, tracking people who check the building or talk about it. If we were clever at all, we could leave some clues that Osama simply had to flee to the next location.

    It’s easy to believe that the intel we found would be a bit more useful with most of the organization confused at best about what happened.

    Then, we could have a quick take down of whoever OBL was in contact with, including ISI contacts, and explain that we got the information when we killed OBL a few weeks ago.

    Yeah, that’s just a fantasy rather than a known option. I think it compares favorably against cheering about the treasure trove of intel we found, and exactly what form it took, and from whom we got it. The top priority here should be preventing another 9/11, as unlikely as Al Qaida may be to carry that out again.

    Dustin (c16eca)

  53. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the legal profession and still consider going to law school for a late career change (thank you GI Bill and Texas’s Hazlewood Act!)I find it hard to believe that someone whose points of view are usually so poorly argued or just plain and simply transparent efforts at contrarian snark could have actually passed the bar.

    SPC Jack Klompus (c1922b)

  54. SPC

    i am continually amazed at who passes the bar. i could tell you stories.

    like i know of a divorce attorney who represented a woman who had one kid, was pregnant with the man’s second kid, and had credible accusations of abuse… and somehow managed to do such a bad job the woman is paying for his mortgage.

    Aaron Worthing (73a7ea)


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