A link to the terrorist mind
A link to a terrorist's mind: that's what Rita Katz says she is providing. In a compelling New Yorker profile this week, Katz, who runs the SITE Institute (Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute), reveals how she and her staffers mine the Web for chatroom postings and jihadist treatises written by seasoned terrorists and their would-be accomplices. SITE ...
A link to a terrorist's mind: that's what Rita Katz says she is providing. In a compelling New Yorker profile this week, Katz, who runs the SITE Institute (Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute), reveals how she and her staffers mine the Web for chatroom postings and jihadist treatises written by seasoned terrorists and their would-be accomplices. SITE then translates the postings and sends the feed to email subscribers, mostly intelligence analysts, journalists, and government officials, for a fee. Some military officers in Iraq even use Katz's emails of bomb schematics found on jihadist sites to brief troops on insurgents' new technology. It's a must-read, particularly for the tension within intelligence circles of having this kind of information and analysis effectively outsourced. Money quote about Katz:
A link to a terrorist's mind: that's what Rita Katz says she is providing. In a compelling New Yorker profile this week, Katz, who runs the SITE Institute (Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute), reveals how she and her staffers mine the Web for chatroom postings and jihadist treatises written by seasoned terrorists and their would-be accomplices. SITE then translates the postings and sends the feed to email subscribers, mostly intelligence analysts, journalists, and government officials, for a fee. Some military officers in Iraq even use Katz's emails of bomb schematics found on jihadist sites to brief troops on insurgents' new technology. It's a must-read, particularly for the tension within intelligence circles of having this kind of information and analysis effectively outsourced. Money quote about Katz:
Katz believes that America has so far understood the terrorist threat only in bastardized and insufficient terms. She believes that it is wrong to assert, as President Bush does, that terrorists are motivated by hatred for our freedoms rather than by our policies in the Middle East or those of their own governments. Though she herself is circumspect about the issue of Iraq, some members of her staff believe that the war is a distraction from the fight with radical Islamic terrorism. But Katz also believes that terrorists are more sophisticated and resilient than most Americans realize, that the war against radical Islam is likely to last for decades, and that the outcome is far from clear. Her project is, in large measure, to convince Americans of the seriousness of the threat by building a direct conduit to the terrorist mind.
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