Instead, analysts there sifted the decrypts and prepared intelligence reports that carefully concealed the true source of the information.
"As a staff officer in the Air Plans division," Niven writes, "Wilder interrogated prisoners of war, gathered and prepared intelligence, briefed and debriefed Allied pilots, and worked on plans for air attacks".
An intelligence digest prepared six mornings a week, by the Central Intelligence Agency, it is one of the most highly classified documents prepared by the government, its distribution limited under President Bush to fewer than a dozen senior administration officials.
The comments by the official, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, in prepared testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, came as tensions between the United States and its allies with Iran over its nuclear program have escalated, with the United States trying to build support for increased sanctions against Iran.
High school hackers can chance upon a breach, but a fully mobilized and prepared cyber force, supported by advanced intelligence methods and human intelligence activity, is needed for cyber operations in a theater of war.
Arguments over what the British state is prepared to disclose from its intelligence archive have even impacted on Anglo-Irish relations.
Above all else though, there is the backlash by internet giants such as Google, which appear to be less prepared to cooperate with the intelligence agencies, at least not those in the UK.
This time, however, allied intelligence was better prepared, stripping away the element of surprise.
David Horowitz, the editor of the Jerusalem Post complained of "deeply flawed" military intelligence and that the "incorrectly prepared" commandos had come aboard "carrying paintball guns".
A Met spokesman said the force gathered information lawfully and within strict guidelines, but was "not prepared to discuss specific aspects relating to intelligence".
The country was "ill-prepared militarily and in terms of its intelligence structures".
