US hacks al-Qaida websites to disrupt propaganda

WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that a US team recently hacked into websites run by the al-Qaida branch in Yemen in an effort to disrupt its propaganda campaign, according to a State Department statement on Thursday.

"A couple of weeks ago, al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen began an advertising campaign on key tribal web sites bragging about killing Americans and trying to recruit new supporters," she said in a speech at the US Special Operations Command in Tampa, Florida on Wednesday night.

"Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaida attacks have taken on the Yemeni people," said Clinton.  

She believed that the efforts have been successful because the extremists "were venting their frustration and asking their supporters not to believe everything they read on the Internet."

According to Clinton, the team is part of a new interagency Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications at the State Department, which draws on experts from the intelligence community and the Defense Department, including Special Operations Forces.

"The nerve center in Washington is linking up to military and civilian teams around the world and serving as a force multiplier for our embassies' communications efforts," she said.

Clinton noted that a team of tech savvy specialists, who are fluent in Urdu, Arabic and Somali, is already patrolling the web and using social media and other tools to undermine al-Qaida's propaganda.