The Post
NAILS IT.We all heard.. many times.. Bush's story about how bin Laden was using a satellite phone. Someone talked about how we could eavesdrop on him, so bin Laden stopped using the satellite phone. Okay, sounds plausible.
Here's what the Post says:
"But it appears to be an urban myth."How did we learn about bin Laden's satphone, then?
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.
And, we heard about it again.. from who?
The second time a news organization reported on the satellite phone, the source was bin Laden himself.
Wow! That nasty press. Those leaks! And what paper did Bush backhandedly accuse of being culpable? The Times! The fucking Times!
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.
That liberal rag!
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.
It appears the genesis for this idea is some intelligence officials who were in place at the time.
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.
Ridiculous.. and typical at the same time.