Profile: Laura Mansfield

A frame from Osama bin Laden’s 2007 video. [Source: Intelcenter]US analysts obtain two new videos of a man thought to be Osama bin Laden (see September 7, 2007 and September 11, 2007) before al-Qaeda makes them available on the internet. A video released on September 7 is obtained by the US-based SITE Institute, which provides it “to government agencies and news organizations at a time when many well-known jihadist Web sites had been shut down in a powerful cyberattack by unknown hackers.” The next tape is obtained by a web designer known as “Laura Mansfield,” who manages “to scoop al-Qaeda by publicly unveiling its new video, a feat she has accomplished numerous times since 2002.” Although SITE’s founder Rita Katz declines to comment on how it obtained the video, the Washington Post says that SITE, Mansfield, and others like them obtained the videos, whose release was publicly announced in advance, “using a combination of computer tricks, personal connections and ingenuity to find and download password-protected content.” [Washington Post, 9/12/2007] The fact that the SITE Institute obtained the tape in advance was apparently leaked to the press by the White House, and SITE will complain about this, as it damages an intelligence operation aimed at al-Qaeda (see September 7, 2007).