Interestingly, a few months before the USS Cole was bombed, the same two (Johnson and Bearden) had written an article talking about how the terrorist threat was exaggerated.
In October 2002, Larry Johnson wrote several articles that appeared in various papers around the country and that talked about how an American invasion in Iraq would cause the entire Muslim world to hate us. He described someone (him maybe) visiting Iraq and how they all (Iraqis) hate the Bushes.
Larry Johnson seems to have been wrong more than once. And yet he continues to be given credibility as an intelligence expert.