In a nutshell: last month, SITE used its access to Obelisk to obtain a "screener" of the latest Osama bin Laden video. They got excited, and, perhaps seeing an opportunity to boast, handed it off to top officials, who (according to Katz) promptly fumbled it into the national news media. Katz feels double-crossed and plays at revenge by naming names to the aforementioned national news media. (Mike also cites the coverage at the Sun.)

She claims that "a years-long surveillance operation" was compromised by the officials' early release of the video. If true, this reflects rather poorly on SITE's tradecraft.

If, at the time of the leak, Katz was embargoing this video from her regular subscribers, then why did she rely on SITE's basic Internet distribution mechanism? This sort of thing ought to be on a separate limited-access network. For that matter, she could have hand-couriered it over to Leiter at NTC. And why does the file remain online after Fielding, Bagnal, and Leiter had pulled their copies? They could have been given separate one-time-use URLs, each pointing to a separate watermarked copy of the video.

Venzke, her competitor at IntelCenter, is taking cheap shots at her expense, but he has a point: "It is not just about getting the video first. It is about having the proper methods and procedures in place ..."

It's possible this is a ruse. From the Bury the Lead Dept:

Al-Qaeda supporters, now alerted to the intrusion into their secret network, put up new obstacles that prevented SITE from gaining the kind of access it had obtained in the past, according to Katz.

"Oh, damn. Now I'm locked out."

It's also possible this is a deliberate disruption, akin to JIEDDO forcing bombers "back on the wire."

In either case, the infighting over the "leak" makes for good cover.

Note to early birds: the Shachtman story has been updated. See additional analysis at Captain's Quarters. Pundita was talking about Obelisk on Monday.

Leak Severed a Link to Al-Qaeda's Secrets