“
Qaeda Plot Leak Has Undermined U.S. Intelligence”: that’s the ominous headline attached to a report in the Sept. 29 issue of the
New York Times by Eric Schmitt and Michael S. Schmidt. The article penned by Schmitt/Schmidt contains a lot of huffing and puffing from nameless, faceless talking heads in the U.S. intelligence community—in other words, the usual suspects—claiming that “since news reports in early August revealed that the United States intercepted messages between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of Al Qaeda, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, discussing an imminent terrorist attack, analysts have detected a sharp drop in the terrorists’ use of a major communications channel that the authorities were monitoring.” And, according to Schmitt/Schmidt, it’s all the McClatchy Newspapers’ fault, and totally not the
Times, because it was only McClatchy who identified the Al Qaeda leaders who were monitored.
Except that, according to a statement by McClatchy Washington bureau chief James Asher that appeared in the Huffington Post, “So far, the U.S. government has not contacted us about our initial story to raise any concerns or to ask us about our sourcing.”
So was this possibly just a lot of source-greasing by Schmitt/Schmidt, coupled with some self-fanny covering by the Times for being so ballless as to conceal the names of the Al Qaeda officials involved, a supposition possibly furthered by the fact that the Times article repeatedly asserted that revelations based on the thousands of classified documents leaked by Edward Snowden—said revelations having frequently appeared in, yes, the New York Times—were, according to Schmitt/Schmidt’s suspiciously omniscient and suspiciously loquacious sources, less damaging than the McClatchy reveals? Bite your tongue!
Hat Tip
Hadas Gold in Dylan Byers Media blog at Politico.
