Almost immediately after putting the site online July 16, he saw visitors from Arab nations and references to it on other militant Islamic Web sites.
"I (was) tracing back to hostile message boards that say when translated, 'Praise Allah, the Alneda site is back up,'" Messner said.
Since he couldn't write any new articles in Arabic, he needed the FBI's help to keep the site alive. He said FBI officials in Baltimore and Salisbury, Md., encouraged his work but took too long to decide how to help him.
Within a week, other Arabic Web sites outed Messner's site as a phony and warned visitors away. He shut it down.
Since Messner gave up the Internet address, the Alneda Web site is back up again, this time hosted in Dayton, Ohio, and carrying a new interview with an Al-Qaida field commander describing battles against American forces.
Messner said he handed over the data he gathered to the FBI.
Intelligence experts said the gamble on a fake Alneda site might not have been worthwhile.
Rather than a traditional sting operation — a routine task for the FBI — Messner's decoy site would be available to everyone on the Internet, said John Pike of Globalsecurity.org. That means the FBI might have inadvertently helped terrorists communicate.
"There is a difference between tossing a kilo of coke into a guy's lap and then cuffing him, versus going out and selling it to little children," Pike said. "I'm sure there would have been somebody at FBI who would have said this information is going to be publicly accessible. We don't even necessarily know all that is going to be communicated here."
Pike said that concern, coupled with the pressure caused by the Internet's breakneck speed, makes the lost opportunity understandable.
"It's too new, and they were probably scared," Pike said. "And they might have well-founded fears."
Former CIA counterterrorism expert Vincent Cannistraro said relying on the public to do intelligence work is dangerous.
"It may be looked on as a large resource for law enforcement. On the other hand, it does lend itself to massive cases of abuse," Cannistraro said. "When it comes to monitoring the Internet and exploiting it, you have to leave it to the professionals."
