In a rare glimpse into cyberwarfare tactics, a top U.S. official has explicitly acknowledged that the U.S. government hacked into websites run by al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen, changing advertisements that boasted about killing Americans into advertisements that underscored the deaths of Muslim civilians in al-Qaida terror attacks.
During her keynote speech at the Special Operations Command gala dinner in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday night, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that State Department specialists attacked sites tied to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that were trying to recruit new members by “bragging about killing Americans.”
“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,” Clinton said. “We can tell our efforts are starting to have an impact because extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the internet.”
It had been suspected that the U.S. government played some role in shutting down several jihadi web forums earlier this year, but officials from the CIA and counterterrorism community had previously denied any involvement.
Highlighting the government’s use of “smart power” to fight extremists, Clinton said that military and civilian specialists around the world are focused on preempting, discrediting, and outmaneuvering extremist propaganda. Calling them “a digital outreach team,” Clinton said the specialists are fluent in Urdu, Arabic, and Somali. The group is “already patrolling the web and using social media and other tools to expose a-Qaida’s contradictions and abuses, including its continuing brutal attacks on Muslim civilians.”
Clinton also said that under her tenure the State Department has become more active in working with the Defense Department and the intelligence community to use diplomacy as a tool to fight terrorism of all forms and extremist propaganda.
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