Debkafile is the website that posted the Al Qaeda warning that triggered the New York radiological deployment in August.

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[extract 8/10]

On Aug. 9, DEBKAfile revealed an al Qaeda Web site warning mentioning New York, Los Angeles and Miami as targets of attacks “by means of trucks loaded with radioactive material.” A second warning added Washington, Seattle and Texas to those targets.

Our counter-terror sources note that the very fact that the United States is conducting exercises this month to test its homeland readiness for a “dirty bomb” threat shows that US security planners have taken the al Qaeda threat to heart.

The war scale of the maneuver indicates that America is preparing for this menace to come possible from additional Middle East terror-related sources, such as Iran, Syria or Hizballah.

DEBKAfile’s US sources add that some critics of President George W. Bush’s Iraq and Iran policies are interpreting the two exercises as a dress rehearsal for possible retaliation against an American military strike against Iran. In other words, the US is preparing for Iran or Syria to respond by using radiological dispersal devices against American or allied targets, including Israel.

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And if Australia's joining in, you can bet we're on the list as well. The only trouble is that it appears from reports circulating today that the US has "blown its cover" (and I'd guess Debka's) for intercepting Al Qaeda e- messages by releasing the pre-9/11 Osama message before it could be broadcast through "official" channels. The vernerable warmonger, the New York Sun reports that after this intelligence analysts watched the terrorism internet disappear before their eyes. If the assertations of this apparently remarkably well-informed staff writer hold water, the US has lost a valuable intelligence resource just for a few days advanced screening time. Apart from the fact that this suggests that the Osama tape may never have come from Al Q, it implies a level of idiocy that has left the west with no way of knowing if dirt bomb attacks are imminent. It's either a massive stuff-up or a Capricorn One, I reckon.

Here's how the Sun put it:

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The intelligence blunder started with what appeared at the time as an American intelligence victory, namely that the federal government had intercepted, a full four days before it was to be aired, a video of Osama bin Laden's first appearance in three years in a video address marking the sixth anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001. On the morning of September 7, the Web site of ABC News posted excerpts from the speech.

But the disclosure from ABC and later other news organizations tipped off Qaeda's internal security division that the organization's Internet communications system, known among American intelligence analysts as Obelisk, was compromised.....

One intelligence officer who requested anonymity said in an interview last week that the intelligence community watched in real time the shutdown of the Obelisk system. America's Obelisk watchers even saw the order to shut down the system delivered from Qaeda's internal security to a team of technical workers in Malaysia. That was the last internal message America's intelligence community saw. "We saw the whole thing shut down because of this leak," the official said. "We lost an important keyhole into the enemy."

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The Washington Post version (subscription required), which is the one being quoted around the world, is much more explicit:

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[extract]

Around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, Katz sent both Leiter and Fielding an e-mail with a link to a private SITE Web page containing the video and an English transcript. "Please understand the necessity for secrecy," Katz wrote in her e-mail. "We ask you not to distribute . . . [as] it could harm our investigations."

Fielding replied with an e-mail expressing gratitude to Katz. "It is you who deserves the thanks," he wrote, according to a copy of the message. There was no record of a response from Leiter or the national intelligence director's office.

Exactly what happened next is unclear. But within minutes of Katz's e-mail to the White House, government-registered computers began downloading the video from SITE's server, according to a log of file transfers. The records show dozens of downloads over the next three hours from computers with addresses registered to defense and intelligence agencies

By midafternoon, several television news networks reported obtaining copies of the transcript. A copy posted around 3 p.m. on Fox News's Web site referred to SITE and included page markers identical to those used by the group. "This confirms that the U.S. government was responsible for the leak of this document," Katz wrote in an e-mail to Leiter at 5 p.m

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Bush can't be held responsible for this- he was in Sydney for APEC. It goes to show what happens when you leave the kids with the keys to the car when you go on holidays... especially when the kid is Dick Cheney. Perhaps Dubya was looking for an insurance write-off?

Now I've gone and gotten myself worried again.

Come to think of it, Al Qaeda would have been realising that their security had been compromised while Dubya and Condi were in international airspace, en route from Sydney to Washington. And if the feared simultaneous Al Qaeda explosions in Australia were about to be ordered, the US would have been unable to detect it, just after having angered its enemy and become blind to its activites.