WASHINGTON, Oct 9: A private US intelligence company has claimed that a Bush administration leak has ruined years of clandestine work to find and exploit Al Qaeda secrets on the Internet, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

SITE Institute, one of many private companies that analyse extremist Web content and use secret methods to find unreleased material and release it early, against the wishes of the militants, was the first to obtain an Osama bin Laden video last month.

The video, released to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary, also contained threats to President Pervez Musharraf and his government for supporting the US-backed war against terror, Rita Katz, who runs SITE, told the Post she turned the video over to the White House on the condition that it not be made public until the material was released on line by Al Qaeda’s own media wing.

Ms Katz said that by the afternoon of Sept 7, the day she turned the video over to White House officials, it had been leaked and was appearing on myriad news Web sites and television networks around the world.

SITE claims the White House leak tipped Al Qaeda off to the glitch that had been exploited for years by the company, rendering the practice useless for future intelligence gathering.

“Techniques that took years to develop are now ineffective and worthless,” Ms Katz told the Post. The Bush administration, however, said on Tuesday it was “concerned” to learn of SITE’s complaints. Spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters, “anytime a citizen comes forward to provide information, we want to encourage it and we want them to know their sources will be protected.” Ms Perino insisted the White House was not the source of the leak last month. She referred reporters to the intelligence community for questions on what she described as any “process problem.”

Some intelligence officials told the Post that SITE had been of great help in obtaining al-Qaeda secrets. SITE sells intelligence to a range of clients, including other private firms and military and intelligence agencies in the US and other countries.

Media organisations can also pay SITE for access to terrorist videos and audio’s obtained, and analysis of the material.

Ms Katz said that within 20 minutes of handing the material to two senior White House officials, with the request for secrecy, it was being downloaded from SITE’s Web site by various intelligence agencies.