Posted on 09/20/2007 8:56:59 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
WASHINGTON - Once her son is off to school, Laura Mansfield settles in at her dining room table with her laptop and begins trolling Arabic-language message boards and chat rooms popular with jihadists.
Fluent in Arabic, the self-employed terror analyst often hacks into the sites, translates the material, puts it together and sends her analysis via a subscription service to intelligence agencies, law enforcement and academics.
Occasionally she comes across a gem, such as when she found a recent Osama bin Laden video — before al-Qaida had announced it.
"I realized, oh my gosh, I'm sitting here, I'm a fat 50-year-old mom and I've managed to scoop al-Qaida," said Mansfield, who uses that name as a pseudonym because she receives death threats.
She sometimes spends 100 hours a week online, and she often finds items after word has begun spreading on the Arabic forums of an imminent release.
"It's really important to understand what the jihadists think and how they're planning on doing things," she said. "They're very vocal. They tell us what they're going to do and then they go out and do it."
Mansfield tips off her intelligence sources when she does find something new, part of an informal working relationship with the government.
"When I send them something, it's welcome," she said. "They thank me."
There have been times when an impending video release has kept her from a planned shopping trip with her daughter.
"It gets really challenging when you're trying to do that and cook spaghetti at the same time," she said.
I have been told that the going rate in Govt. for Arabic language speakers is 150K.
No way. The NSA 'No Such Agency' in a place down the street. Looking just like she thinks she looks now. Getting a paycheck from some irrelevent company that gets paid to pay her.
I would be outraged that they do not pay her to join the FBI or CIA! Cheap bastards...
bump
I wonder often what is the best fast-track to learning Arabic.
Nope. Down the street with that. And change the I.P. address many times a day. You can find the general area where people are with a static I.P. now. Ping response time. Imagine a triangle within a circle. She could use remote relay nodes several states away that do the same thing. As if she were in those states. There is SW in the newsgroups and FTP that can do things like clean up packets. She should be hired for her hobby.
It's not a secret anymore. We were just better at it than the old Soviet Union. There are books written about that stuff. Even books in Russian. I would like to know scribbled Arabic and sit around in my underwear and a bathrobe and a coffee cup unshaven and do this job:) It must be a GS-13 job.
I work from home nearly 100% of the time. While I certainly could get away with the bathrobe, coffee and unshaven behavior, I don't do that. I shave, shower, dress, eat breakfast and put in a 10 to 16 hour day. My supervisor is 3000 miles away. My boss doesn't need to talk to me. He talks to my customers. They say everything that needs to be said. The annual reviews and pay raises let me know I'm doing the right thing.
“The CIA should hire her for $50K per year, and give her an office from which she could do the same analysis.”
OH NO....
Between Sensitivity training, gub’ment vacations and days off and all of the rest of the crap, she’d NEVER get any work done!!
Ditto.
OPINION:
Private citizens do not have any extra (special) protection.
They need to hire their own protection and/or protect themselves.
That would be Shannen Rossmiller.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=shannenrossmiller
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=rossmiller
The State Of Louisiana and Bossier City have put up the
$100,000,000 that will build the “STINK~TANK” just off base that will employ 2-10,000 “jobs” on/in a 58 acre complexxx.
Bout 5mi. down the road from me,,,Folks with “talents” like
they need don’t live in this area,,,soooo,,,
Maybe we’ll ALL get to Play...;0)
I beg to differ. As long as “Laura” is not employed by the fools in the CIA/NSA/FBI, then they have no way to tell her what to do and (more alarmingly) what to *not* do. She’s going to go where her common sense and language skills take her, untrammeled by the political correctness that pervades our security agencies now.
The CIA has proven themselves to be worse than useless since 9/11. And before 9/11 too. Matter of fact, since the Church hearings in the early 70’s, the CIA hasn’t been good for much at all except frittering away their black budget.
Given a choice between a single person like Laura or a collection of Ivy-league pinheads on the government dole like the CIA, I’ll take Laura.
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