One week Obama's team gets a security briefing...

the next week the existence of a 2004 secret order allowing the hot pursuit of al Qaeda suspects gets leaked. A secret so top secret that no White House spokesperson will confirm or deny it's existence. And all of a sudden it gets leaked. Like that.

Coincidence? I think not.

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere, according to senior American officials.

You will note the source is referred to as "senior American officials".

Funny, the only new senior American officials on the security scene that would now have access to this 2004 secret order is from Team Obama.

Connect. The. Dots.

The first dot leads us to the source and that is the New York Times. Guess what? This past weekend they have been running profiles of Obama's "small group of foreign policy advisors." Another coincidence! Amazing. So each and every one of the Obama team had the means to obtain the secret through the first top secret security briefing and then they had the opportunity to spill the secret beans during the course of their profile interview.

Hold up, you say. I thought Obama campaigned with a foreign policy staff rivaling the State Department itself. Why couldn't it have been one of them? Here's why, possums. Because it all comes down to 'means, motive and opportunity' IMO and the 300 didn't have the means or the opportunity this small group of foreign policy advisors had.

Here is the brush off letter sent on November 7 by Susan Rice and Tony Lake to the 300 members of Obama's foreign policy team. It basically names who's been left standing and moving onto the transition team.

We are obviously entering a new phase now with the transition. The transition will be a separate operation from the campaign, which is now disbanding. So too must our foreign policy expert teams disband. The transition operation will be brief and comparatively lean. Given the need to complete this work expeditiously and efficiently, please understand that only a limited number of people will be able to support those activities.

Who remains part of this 'comparatively lean' team after the campaign and who would be the most likely to be exposed to the latest security briefing? Next dot: Who out of this group was profiled by the NY Times? In other words, who would have the means, motive and opportunity to leak? To my way of thinking we're looking at the following individuals: Susan Rice, Tony Lake, Mark Lippert and Denis McDonough.

Now, what do you think the motive was for spilling the secret beans on Al Qaeda Network Exord? Think about it. What would motivate you to betray your country? Power and greed come to my mind. I would imagine the scramble for places on Team Obama is pretty fierce. Rice and Lake are the Clintonian interlopers. Lippert and McDonough are the longtime aides closest to Obama. It's a power struggle of Mongolian goat phuk proportions, I'm sure.

Right now my gut and my dots are leading me to Mark Lippert and Denis McDonough for the simple reason that I think they would have more immediate access to Obama and the actual details of the security briefing - in other words, they are more likely to have the means, baby.

This Newsweek article gives you an idea of the pecking order...

Until Obama launched his presidential campaign, Lippert was his only senior foreign-policy aide. Now the presumptive Democratic nominee has more than 300 experts advising him on foreign affairs, organized into roughly 20 specialized groups and weighing in on every conceivable issue. The top ranks include two veterans of the Clinton administration: former assistant secretary of State Susan Rice and former national-security adviser Tony Lake. But day-to-day, Obama relies on two key aides. One is Denis McDonough, a former Capitol Hill staffer based at Obama's campaign HQ in Chicago. The other is Lippert.

Add this to the fact that Lippert and McDonough have been madly spinning Obama's foreign policy tales since the day after the election and I think we're looking at someone who is trying to be the new big swinging foreign policy dic& (motive) by playing footsie (means) with someone over at the NY Times. (opportunity)

My thought is that Obama got his mind blown with that security briefing and when he heard Rumsfeld had ordered hot pursuit of al Qaeda into countries we were not at war with he freaked and blurted it out to Lippert and McDonough when they debriefed him. They freaked and someone blurted it out to the NY Times for whatever reason. File this one under: Amateurs operating above their pay grade.

Useless idle speculation, I know. But I don't like it when loose lips compromise the people who are fighting to keep us safe. This hamhanded leak worsens the situation throughout the Middle East, denying political cover to those countries who support our war on al Qaeda but seek to pacify the Radicals in their own countries by doing it on the down low. It also antagonizes those countries who don't support us and makes them resent us even more. The leak goes on to jeopardize another successful tool in our terror fighting arsenal and weakens us further, making us more susceptible to attack.

All this and Obama hasn't even been sworn in yet...