Probing SITE Intelligence GroupJames F. Tracy The Search for International Terrorist Entities Intelligence Group was co-founded by Rita Katz in 2001. Katz is an Iraqi-born Jew. Her father, an Israeli spy, was executed by Iraqis as a result of his intelligence activities. In 2003 Katz authored a book, Terrorist Hunter: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman Who Went Undercover to Infiltrate the Radical Islamic Groups Operating in America, which she published using the pseudonym, Anonymous. In the book Katz explains how she took on the trappings of a Muslim woman to infiltrate the meetings of radical Muslim terrorists. The plot is unlikely, especially when one considers that such secret fundamentalist gatherings are almost always segregated along gender lines and no woman, however elaborate her costume, would be granted entry without her identity being firmly established. SITE Intelligence Group consists of Katz and two senior advisers, one of whom is Bruce Hoffman, the Corporate Chair in Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency at the RAND Corporation and former director of the RANDs Washington DC office. The SITE Intelligence Group constantly monitors the Internet and traditional media for material and propaganda released by jihadist groups and their supporters, the companys website announces. Once obtained, SITE immediately translates the material and provides the intelligence along with a contextual analysis explaining the source of the material and its importance to our subscribers.[1] In 2003 and 2004, though claiming to be a 501c3 non-profit, SITE received more than $500,000 from the US government. Also in the early 2000s Katz received $150,000 from the FBI for consulting services.[2] A Guidestar search for nonprofits yields no recent records for SITE, suggesting how it has abandoned its non-profit status and now relies on corporate and individual subscriptions for revenue. In 2005 the private mercenary contractor Blackwater hailed SITE as an invaluable resource.[3] The majority of jihadist groups operate one or more media outlets that produce and publish the groups multimedia, and in some cases, communiqus and magazines, SITE explains on its website. These media units involve production teams and correspondents who report directly from the battlefield, and craft propaganda to indoctrinate and recruit new fighters into the groups ranks. SITE provides no direct links to the jihadist groups websites or multimedia productions from its own platform.[4] Though routinely overlooked in the flurry of front-page coverage corporate media have allotted the three beheading videosthe most recent of which featured British aid worker David Cawthorne Hainesit is common knowledge that SITE uncannily secures terrorist statements and videos well before the USs wide array of lavishly-funded intelligence services. The video later proved to be fraudulent. With the above in mind, one may ask, If parties within a US presidential administration or the State Department sought to bypass the potential scrutiny of a wide-ranging intelligence community concerning such matters, while simultaneously providing itself with the means to effectively propagandize the American public toward a broader end, what better way than to contract the services of an entity such as SITE? If there is some merit in the above appraisal, the arrangement is now being pushed to an extreme by the Obama administration to pave the road toward a long-sought goal: war with Syrias Bashar Al Assad regime. Indeed, services such as SITEs are a potent and valuable means for moving public opinion, as they have done in recent weeks concerning military action against the Islamic State. Along these lines, a decade ago both John Kerry and George W. Bush credited the latters re-election to a surreptitious appearance by Osama bin Laden via video tape several days before the vote.[7] Playing a role similar to SITE, IntelCenter acts as an intermediary between Al-Qaedas supposed media arm, As-Sahab, and major media. In other words, they acquire the tapes and pass them on to the press, and have occasionally even predicted when tapes would be released beforehand, Paul Joseph Watson reports. As noted, news outlets seldom see fit to closely analyze SITE or Katz concerning their research and function as conduits for terrorist propaganda. A LexisNexis search for SITE Intelligence in the article content of US newspapers and major world publications over the past two years produces 317 itemsan admittedly low figure given the prominence of SITEs recent disclosures. Yet a similar search for Steven Sotloff alone yields over 1,000 newspaper stories and 600 broadcast transcripts, suggesting the sensationalistic usage and effect of SITEs data and how neither SITE nor Katz are called upon to explain their specific methods and findings. Indeed, a similar search for SITE Intelligence and Rita Katz yields only 26 entries over a two year period. Of these, 14 appear in the Washington Post, a publication with well-established links to US intelligence. Four New York Times articles feature the combined entities. In a CNN on the heels of the Sotloff beheading, Katz explains how again SITE curiously surpassed the combined capacities of the entire US intelligence community in securing the Sotloff footage. The video shows the beheading of Steven Sotloff, Katz cautiously begins after being queried on the documents authenticity. This unusual statement alongside SITEs remarkable abilities, in addition to the fact that it is a past government contractor that has been caught spreading dubious information, should put news outlets on guard concerning virtually anything the organization produces. Undoubtedly this is a great deal to ask from a news media that all too frequently participate in orienting public opinion toward war, a feat it has once again accomplished with the aid of SITE. The interests and alliances of the transnational entities owning such media make them poised to profit from the very geopolitical designs drawn up by SITEs corporate and government clientsthe most important of which may be those seeking to broaden Middle Eastern conflict. No doubt, the widescale acceptance of such propaganda is also the result of the vastly diminished critical capacities of the broader public, now several decades in the making. Notes [1] Services, SITE Intelligence Group, , accessed September 15, 2014, This article first appeared at MemoryHoleBlog.com, the official blog of Dr. James Tracy. Its only obvious. They think we are stupid but the majority of us with brains can actually see through them. They are as transparent as the thin veil they try to hide under. 