Is State Dept. hacking Al Qaeda? Not quite, but propaganda war is fierce.

"The challenge was that for so long the US government wasn't really doing any messaging against Al Qaeda," McCants says. "Whenever one of their statements went out, nothing was said – which makes sense at a high level since you don't want to dignify it with response. But there was also a feeling that we were missing a chance to meet Al Qaeda at a tactical level as it tries to target their propaganda at populations they want to recruit. Now we've got digital engagement set up to go into places where Al Qaeda is pushing their message and to push back against it."

In the specific instance mentioned by Clinton, Al Qaeda supporters apparently posted a picture that purported to be one of coffins holding US servicemen – draped with American flags and prepared to be loaded onto a cargo airplane, according to McCants and another researcher, both of whom had seen the picture. The message bragged about how many Americans Al Qaeda had killed.

What the State Department did was to run a counter message with a similar picture – but with the coffins draped with Yemeni flags and noting how many Yemenis the terrorist group had killed – the flags apparently Photoshopped onto the picture.

"The actual picture that was posted first on the Yemeni website had coffins with American flags over it – looked like being put into jet," says Aaron Y. Zelin, a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "What they did was to change it so that it was Yemeni flags draped over the coffins. I'm not sure when they posted it. But I saw it when I was at their offices – they showed it to me."

Mr. Zelin, an expert on jihadi websites, says that the US effort is more likely to have an impact on the general population that frequents the site than it would on a closed jihadi website frequented by Al Qaeda sympathizers and other hardliners.

"I'm not sure we have a very good barometer for judging how important or influential these efforts by the State Department are or will be, especially since in many places in Yemen there is no Internet or even electricity," says Gregory Johnsen, a scholar on Yemen at Princeton University.

Even so, the US has "a large tool box at its disposal," he notes. "For the US to be opening that up and using it – and not just depending on more drones – is important," Mr. Johnsen says. "There never can be a US win if the struggle is always framed as the US against Al Qaeda in Yemen. Anytime we're mixing it up in the public conversation and not just ceding ground that's good."

There's no doubt that the US has cyberwarfare capabilities that can take down websites or do other damage. But there's long been an internal debate within the US intelligence community and defense department over whether it was best to leave the jihadi sites up – in order to try to collect intelligence. About a half dozen jihadi websites were temporarily knocked offline by someone or some government in April.

The Central Intelligence Agency group along with the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command have been actively combating jihadis via the Internet for nearly a decade, says James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

There are even a few direct signs of discomfiture among Al Qaeda sympathizers over the State Department's recent efforts. On April 24, a group called the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF) posted a note warning against "any false or untrusted news related to Somalia and advise brothers not to be helpful to US State Department communication team which has the task of distorting Islam and challenging mujahideen everywhere," according to an English translation by Zelin.

Perhaps there is some real cyberattack going on as well.

The GIMF message alludes to a cyberattack against it, specifically "a copy of mujahideen secrets program [that] was published by a member of this forum with spyware in it, and a fake copy of the program was published as if it was a new version."

The GIMF, it said, was "forced to issue this warning to brothers not to download the program which contained spyware."

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