The State Department has launched a different sort of raid against al-Qaeda, engaging in a cat and mouse game to replace anti-American al-Qaeda ads on Yemeni tribal websites, the Associated Press reported.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that experts based at the State Department swapped al-Qaeda ads on Yemeni websites bragging about killing Americans with ones showing the deadly impact of al-Qaeda tactics on Yemenis themselves.
"Our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaeda attacks have taken on the Yemeni people," Clinton said.
In response, "Extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the Internet," she said.
Clinton says the cyber maneuver was launched by an interagency group of specialists, including diplomats, special operators and intelligence analysts, housed at the State Department. Called the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, its experts patrol the Internet and social media to counter al-Qaeda's attempts to recruit new followers.
"Together, they will work to pre-empt, discredit and outmaneuver extremist propaganda," Clinton said.
Rather than hacking the sites covertly, the State Department specialists challenge the extremists in open forums.
"We parody and poke holes in what they do," a State Department official explained, in a cyber "cat and mouse game."
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to because he was not authorized to describe the process publicly.
Last week, AQAP launched a new series of banner attack ads focusing on them fighting the Americans, with U.S.-flag-draped coffins, the official explained.
The State Department team countered the attack by buying space on the same site with new ads, featuring the coffins of Yemeni civilians.
Clinton described the cyber effort as part of a larger, multipronged attack on terrorism that goes beyond attacks like the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden to include the propaganda battle, and the longer, slower campaign of diplomats working alongside special operations troops to shore up local governments and economies and train local forces.
