[Cryptography] Bin Laden satphones

[Watson Ladd]

On Nov 22, 2015 5:07 PM, "Henry Baker" <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:
>
> At 11:41 AM 11/22/2015, Donald Eastlake wrote:
> >On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 10:50 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1 at pipeline.com> wrote:
> >> ...
> >>
> >> Earlier in his career, Osama Bin Laden used (Iridum?) satphones for communications.
> >
> >Nope, Inmarsat I believe, which is cheaper than iridium <www.inmarsat.com>.
> >
> >Note that Iridium was saved from going out of business due to
> >bankruptcy by US DoD funding. While nominally run by a private
> >corporation these days, with headquarters in McLean, Virginia, I would
> >not be surprised if it was cooperating with the US government even
> >beyond that, of the two known active Iridium ground stations, one is
> >operated by the US Defense Information Systems Agency in Hawaii. But
> >if you need communications service no matter where you are in the
> >world where you can see the sky, from the top of Mt Everest to the
> >South pole, Iridium <www.iridium.com> is great.
>
> Here's a pretty good rundown of this 'urban myth', which apparently originated with the CIA's Foreign Denial and Deception Committee!  [I didn't make this up!]
>
> http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/osama_sat_phone_20060110
>
> But as early as 1996, Time magazine had reported that Bin Laden “uses satellite phones to contact fellow Islamic militants.”  Time gave its source as Taliban officials, not U.S. intelligence­-giving the lie to Bush’s assertion that government leaks were to blame for the outing of that piece of information.

The information Bush claimed was classified and leaked was not that
bin Laden used Iridium, but that the US could track him with it. This
fact doesn't appear in the second link in your email. Obviously bin
Laden knew what kind of phone he used! I haven't dug up the Washington
Post article the 9/11 commission cited as containing this detail to
check whether or not the fact appears, but it doesn't appear in the
Time article.

>
> http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,988976,00.html
>
> Time repeated the information after the African embassy bombings, reporting in its Aug. 24, 1998, issue­-on newsstands a week before the cover date­-that Bin Laden “keeps in touch with the world via computers and satellite phones.”  (Careful readers will note that the *Washington Times* story contained the exact same language as the earlier Time article.)
>
> CNN broadcast a report by Peter Bergen the day of the cruise missile attacks in which Bergen said he had interviewed Bin Laden in Afghanistan in March 1997 and that “he communicates by satellite phone.”  The same information appeared in newspapers in Japan, Germany, Pakistan and Philadelphia.  (Jack Shafer’s article has a good rundown.)
>
> http://www.slate.com/id/2132975/

This article also misses the first phrase in Bush's sentence,
discussing the phone and not the capability.

>
> So the facts are these: It was common knowledge years before the bombing that Bin Laden communicated via a satellite phone.  The source of this information was not a leak from the U.S. government.  Rather, it came first from the Taliban, and then from Bin Laden himself.
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121901545.html
>
> "The fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result of a leak," the president [Bush] said.  "And guess what happened?  Saddam -- Osama bin Laden changed his behavior.  He began to change how he communicated."
>
> Later, the president repeated the example and decried what he called "revealing sources, methods and what we use the information for" as helping "the enemy" change its behavior.
>
> the president [Bush] was referring to a profile of the al Qaeda leader that appeared in the *Washington Times* [normally a right-leaning news organization!!] on Aug. 21, 1998.  In the 21st paragraph, the article stated: "He keeps in touch with the world via computers and satellite phones and has given occasional interviews to international news organizations."
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/21/AR2005122101994_pf.html
>
> first reported by a best-selling book, *validated* [!] by the Sept. 11 commission [goes to show how much we should believe them!] and then repeated by the president.
>
> The al Qaeda leader's communication to aides via satellite phone had already been reported in 1996
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201800.html
>
> [Rep.] Hoekstra [(R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee] has distributed to lawmakers a classified report on leaks compiled by James B. Bruce, vice chairman of the **CIA's Foreign Denial and Deception Committee,** [you can't make this stuff up!] and a leading advocate of enacting very tough laws on leaks.  In 2002, Bruce was quoted as saying that "we've got to do whatever it takes -- if it takes sending SWAT teams into journalists' homes -- to stop these leaks."

>
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