Loose Lips Sink Cell Phones?

The Washington Post has this story, headlined "File the Bin Laden Phone Leak Under 'Urban Myths'".

President Bush asserted this week that the news media published a U.S. government leak in 1998 about Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, alerting the al Qaeda leader to government monitoring and prompting him to abandon the device. The story of the vicious leak that destroyed a valuable intelligence operation was first reported by a best-selling book, validated by the Sept. 11 commission and then repeated by the president. But it appears to be an urban myth.

Oh?

It seems the fact that Bin Laden used a satellite phone to communicate with his aides had been reported before any leaks took place. On one occasion, the cited source was the Taliban government in Afghanistan, on another it was Bin Laden himself.

Causal effects are hard to prove, but other factors could have persuaded bin Laden to turn off his satellite phone in August 1998. [Aug. 22, 1998] A day earlier, the United States had fired dozens of cruise missiles at his training camps, missing him by hours.

It occurs to me that merely stating that Bin Laden used a particular type of phone is one thing – stating that his phone is being tracked and/or listened to might be quite another.

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.

Not quite a smoking gun here. It's possible Bin Laden had decided to abandon the use of his phone after being shot at, and that the LA Times piece merely confirmed that the US was tracking his phone, and not just making Baghdad Bob style announcements about it.

Officials could not explain yesterday why they focused on the Washington Times story when other news organizations at the same time reported on the satellite phone -- and that the information was not particularly newsworthy. "You got me," said Benjamin, who was director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council staff at the time. "That was the understanding in the White House and the intelligence community. The story ran and the lights went out." 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.

I think the credibility of the Sept. 11 commission report may suffer from this.

(Update, 13:54 – Also see Ranting Profs on the same article.)