2008 Woodie Awards
Mom fights terrorism:
finds bin-Laden video
Brendan Block
Issue date: 9/28/07 Section: Forum
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Most Americans probably imagine those who fight the War on Terror as sleek, cool agents in black suits all wearing dark sunglasses. Often in movies, these people get all the glory with really breath-taking fights rife with near deadly explosions. On the other side of the spectrum is the war of information including the psychological aspect of terrorism often not emphasized.
The most exciting segment of the new War on Terror due to technology shifts is that a 50 year old South Carolina mother can thwart Al-Qaeda and alert the U.S. government on the plans of terrorists.
Laura Mansfield fights terrorism from her dining room table chatting online with jihadists. She is a plump, middle-aged mother of three, who goes by a pseudonym because of countless death threats. After living and working in the Middle-East for seven years, Mansfield became fluent in Arabic and spends sometimes up to 100 hours a week on the Internet tracking terrorist activity on Arabic websites, blogs and chat-rooms. In 2004 she was the first person to find the video of Nick Berg's beheading.
Berg, a young American businessman, was seeking telecommunications work in Iraq when he disappeared in 2004. On May 10, a month after his last conversation with his family, a military patrol car found him decapitated in Baghdad.
It is alleged that Mansfield was the investigator who found the horrific video and downloaded it from the terror group al-Ansar's website. She is also responsible for the translation of the video into English. Mansfield has appeared as a terror analyst on Fox News, CNN and occasionally a writer for WorldNetDaily.
Now Mansfield is in the limelight again in the "Associated Press" article "Mom finds Osama video before release." She can hack into the jihadists' sites and translate their material.
"It's really important to understand what the jihadists think and how they're planning on doing things," said Mansfield. "They're very vocal. They tell us what they're going to do and then they go out and do it."
The most exciting segment of the new War on Terror due to technology shifts is that a 50 year old South Carolina mother can thwart Al-Qaeda and alert the U.S. government on the plans of terrorists.
Laura Mansfield fights terrorism from her dining room table chatting online with jihadists. She is a plump, middle-aged mother of three, who goes by a pseudonym because of countless death threats. After living and working in the Middle-East for seven years, Mansfield became fluent in Arabic and spends sometimes up to 100 hours a week on the Internet tracking terrorist activity on Arabic websites, blogs and chat-rooms. In 2004 she was the first person to find the video of Nick Berg's beheading.
Berg, a young American businessman, was seeking telecommunications work in Iraq when he disappeared in 2004. On May 10, a month after his last conversation with his family, a military patrol car found him decapitated in Baghdad.
It is alleged that Mansfield was the investigator who found the horrific video and downloaded it from the terror group al-Ansar's website. She is also responsible for the translation of the video into English. Mansfield has appeared as a terror analyst on Fox News, CNN and occasionally a writer for WorldNetDaily.
Now Mansfield is in the limelight again in the "Associated Press" article "Mom finds Osama video before release." She can hack into the jihadists' sites and translate their material.
"It's really important to understand what the jihadists think and how they're planning on doing things," said Mansfield. "They're very vocal. They tell us what they're going to do and then they go out and do it."
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