Forwarded from: Eric Lee Green <ericat_private> On Friday 12 October 2001 04:46, you wrote: > Forward from: Dan Verton <Dan_Vertonat_private> > > Ted, > > I reported on this when it first happened and have a source in Moscow > who was, in fact, interviewed by the FBI in Russia shortly after this > news broke. So I think it is fair to say that although there is much > speculation about the nature of Moonlight Maze, and even if it every > really happened, something serious did occur that sparked an > investigation overseas. I would also add that I have been told that The problem is that a) Moonlight Maze first came to light in the spring of 1999, b) indications at the time was that the documents were "sensitive" in that they described important technologies and policies but not classified (if classified documents were connected to the public Internet then someone was not doing their job big-time!), and c) there were no indications at the time that this had any connection to bin Laden. The fact that Moonlight Maze is once again trotted out in a dog-and-pony show through un-named "experts" (undoubtedly government law enforcement officials) in order to justify new cyber-crime laws justifiably makes people suspicious. It may very well be true that Moonlight Maze has some connection to bin Laden, but trotting it out once again as the tired two-year-old McGuffin of this drama and having tame unskeptical journalistic mouthpieces with no computer expertise as their primary mouthpieces tends to reduce their credibility. I will add that the USA Today puff piece was some of the shoddiest journalism I've ever encountered. The writer of that piece apparently made no attempt to run the assertations made past outside security experts or even look at past reporting on Moonlight Maze but, rather, simply repeated the assertations of the un-named "experts" uncritically. That's not being a journalist. That's being a government propoganda mouthpiece. Journalists are supposed to make at least some attempt to verify their facts independently, instead of simply repeating the official Bush administration line as gospel truth. Alas, journalists are becoming an endangered species, being swiftly replaced by hackneyed keyboard pounders who uncritically turn corporate and administration press releases into "stories". Note that this is NOT, BTW, a blast at Dan Verton, who IS a journalist and who does make an attempt to independently verify the things he reports upon (unlike the writer of the USA Today puff piece). As for Dan's reporting of lack of Russian cooperation: Russia operates in their own best interest, not that of the United States. There are indications that the Russian Mafya, government, and various powerful oligarchs are deeply entangled with each other. It is not surprising that U.S. law enforcement officials cannot get cooperation in this case. That does tend to indicate, however, that this is NOT a bin Laden operation, but, rather a case of enterprising Russians attempting to gain commercial advantage. The Russians have no love for bin Laden, who they hold partially accountable for terrorism on their own soil. Eric Lee Green GnuPG public key at http://badtux.org/eric/eric.gpg mailto:ericat_private Web: http://www.badtux.org You do not save freedom by destroying freedom - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomoat_private with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Oct 15 2001 - 03:11:29 PDT