THEY BECAME SILENT

Behind all the fuss the Bush regime is making about tapping communications, the truth is that Al Qaeda and other groups have been much "quieter" since late 2003. From Suskind's book, page 277:

It's just that in the closing months of 2003, we started to go blind.

The U.S. government, that is.

The carefully constructed global network of sigint and what can be called finint, or financial intelligence, started to go quiet.

In short, Al Qaeda, and its affiliates and imitators, stopped leaving electronic footprints. It started slowly, but then became distinct and clear, a definable trend. They were going underground.