Hoe houd je je geheim agenten ook … geheim? Om te beginnen zet je ze niet op een foto. Zeker niet met een uitgesproken gele das. Toch stond ‘ John’ – de man die Bin Laden heeft ‘gevonden’ op de gevoelige plaat. Namelijk de nu al historische verbeelding van de situation room tijdens de raid op Bin Ladens villa in Pakistan. Dat wil zeggen: we konden zien hoe groot hij was en welke das hij droeg. Meer had John Young (Cryptome.org) niet nodig om ‘John’ aan te kunnen wijzen. Hoe? Zo:
About nine hours after reading the AP piece, Mr. Young posted a story that appeared to unmask the master terrorist hunter. And he did it with the sort of simple deductive reasoning that wouldn’t be out of place in a Miss Marple novel. It seems that although the man’s face was cropped out of the famous Situation Room photo, his pale yellow necktie was not.
He also appeared to be unusually tall. The White House, as part of an all-out effort to trumpet its signature intelligence triumph, had released a number of photos on that day to media outlets around the world. Mr. Young simply checked the administration’s Flickr feed for shots of a man with the same build and taste in neckwear.
And there he was.
Indeed, he turned up again in a shot taken two days later, accompanying then-C.I.A. director Leon Panetta to a closed-door briefing of Congress. Curiously, he was even wearing the same tie [bron].