Tuesday, January 27, 2009

How does a nice Jewish girl end up tanslating and releasing Al-Qaeda Messages?

Background of Nice Jewish Girl, Rita Katz, from Wikipedia:
Rita Katz (born 1963, Basra, Iraq) is the co-founder of the SITE Institute, a private intelligence firm based in Washington, DC which focuses on tracking global terrorist networks, and intercepting and distributing secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications networks.

In October, 2007, it was revealed that Katz had discovered, and issued to the Bush Administration a copy of an Osama bin Laden video which had yet to be released by Al-Qaeda. Katz issued the video via a private link to a SITE web page to White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, and Joel Bagnal, deputy assistant to the president for homeland security. Within minutes, computers registered to various parts of the Executive Branch began downloading the video, and within hours a transcript referencing SITE had appeared on FOX News.

Katz, a fluent Arabic speaker, was born in Basra in 1963 to a wealthy Iraqi Jewish family. In 1968 her father was arrested on charges of spying for Israel and the rest of the family put under house arrest. The following year Katz's father was convicted and executed in a public hanging and Katz's mother managed to escape with the children to Israel.

While in Israel, Katz served in the Israeli Defense Forces and studied politics and history at Tel Aviv University. She later married a medical student and in 1997 came to the United States with her husband who received a National Institutes of Health fellowship.

Link to the originator of the question for discussion here.

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