Supposedly this is a transcript of a May 2003 article from the Hindustan Times, about a 17-year-old boy who claims to have been asked by the U.S. government to help with cracking a steganographically-encrypted Al Qaeda message. Personally, I think this is garbage.

] The Americans had tried almost everything, but they just
] couldn't crack an encrypted message they came across
] while investigating the 9/11 attacks. Finally, they
] approached a 17-year-old boy in Delhi about whom The New
] York Times had done a feature.
]
] Over the next 10 days, Ankit Fardia hunkered down in his
] room in Delhi and came up with the key to crack the
] message.
]
] The worst fears of American investigators came true --
] Al-Qaeda was using a sophisticated technology,
] called steganography, to communicate. It involved sending
] encrypted messages concealed in a photograph or series of
] photographs.
]
] "I was lucky in some ways but I am still proud that
] I was the only one in the world to be able to crack the
] code," Fardia told the Hindustan Times from Pune,
] where he is lecturing students and corporate employees on
] cyber security. Fardia is the author of Guide to Ethical
] Hacking.
]
] Fardia was understandably cagey about revealing the
] contents of the message or the name of the US agency that
] approached him. "In January 2002, I received an
] e-mail asking me whether I would like to help the US in
] breaking open a message which was of great importance to
] national security. I did not believe it was actually from
] a US agency so I asked them to send me their digital
] signature. They immediately sent it back," he said.
]
] "I would not like to discuss the message. But yes,
] what I cracked was a message from Al-Qaeda," he added.
] The US government sent him letters of appreciation.
]
] US embassy officials said they knew nothing about this.
] But they said it was possible for a US agency to make such an
] approach without keeping them in the picture.
]
] Fardia said the Al-Qaeda message he cracked had been encrypted
] thrice over to make sure it could not be read, even if it was
] intercepted.
]
] The US is considered one of the leaders in encryption technology,
] but the technology used by Al-Qaeda was as good if not better,
] Fardia added.

Bogus bogus bogus. I bet he got the idea for "thrice encrypted" from "Triple DES".

I hate it when news media will print stories as fact, without bothering to verify anything.

More information about this kid and his claims, here:
 http://www.memestreams.net/thread/bid7800/

Source of Al Qaeda Steganography Rumor?