[Paisan]

I smell a rat.

Journalists don't arbitrarily check out airplane tail numbers without someone telling them that they should...

[GAB-1955]

"Journalists don't arbitrarily check out airplane tail numbers without someone telling them that they should..."

Yes, but that someone could have been the planespotter. I have a related hobby--shortwave radio--and in the hobby postings, the planespotters are obsessive about matching tail numbers with organizations and with patterns of flight. You can track movements of transport planes very easily combining the WUN radio hobby postings and the planespotters, and this provides intelligence. In fact, the intelligence communities in radio monitoring are very aware of the hobbyists, and when they start making too good deductions, they change codewords and patterns.

Now, the spotters know which planes are CIA cover planes, if only by deduction; they're government, but not Air Force, State Dept, etc. They know where they're landing in Europe (the hobby is strongest in Europe) and they make keen deductions. The spotter called the European press, and there we are.

You can't run a long-term operation without someone knowing about it.

[ContemptofCourt]

Perhaps you haven't seen this thing called the "internet". There is a website devoted to plane sightings, complete with pics of every plane out there, as well as dates, times, and locations of every takeoff and landing.

Lets face facts...the internet has become a godsend for the obsessive/compulsive of the world....

[Grendel9]

I agree. The tailend of the story clues us
into the idea that CIA "leakers" may be
responsible.

Course, we don't know the whole story...
probably never will. After George Tenet, a
holdover from the Clinton Administration,
was found guilty of gregious "oversights,"
one has to wonder just how many other
Democratic workers are still on staff there.