Posted on 05/21/2006 7:50:06 AM PDT by yoe
Judith Miller, The New York Times reporter at the center of the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby case, reveals that she received advance word about a terrorist plot that turned out to be 9/11 - but the Times spiked the story.
Miller spent 85 days in jail before finally disclosing that Libby was the source who confirmed to her that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative.
Miller - who's no longer with the Times - never wrote a story about Plame. But she's more troubled by another story that didn't run - the one about 9/11.
Miller began investigating al-Qaida after the terrorist group's October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen.
Over the weekend before July 4, 2001, there were strong indications that terrorists were planning to attack the U.S. or a major American target elsewhere, Miller said in an interview with Scott Malone and Rory O'Connor that appeared on the Web site NavySEALS.com.
The attack never materialized. But that weekend "I did manage to have a conversation with a source," she told the interviewers.
"The person told me that there was some concern about an intercept that had been picked up. The incident that had gotten everyone's attention was a conversation between two members of al-Qaida. And they had been talking to one another, supposedly expressing disappointment that the United States had not chosen to retaliate more seriously against what had happened to the Cole.
"One al-Qaida operative was overheard saying to the other, "Don't worry; we're planning something so big now that the U.S. will have to respond.'
"I was obviously floored by that information. I thought it was a very good story - the source was impeccable, the information was specific, tying al-Qaida operatives to, at least, knowledge of the attack on the Cole, and they were warning that something big was coming, to which the United States would have to respond. This struck me as a major Page 1-potential story."
However, when Miller met with her editor Stephen Engelberg, he was critical, noting that Miller didn't know who the operatives were, where they were overheard or what attack they were planning.
"At that point I realized I didn't have the whole story," Miller said. She continued to probe, but couldn't turn up enough information to satisfy Engelberg.
The story never ran. And two months later came al-Qaida's Sept. 11 attacks.
Engelberg, now managing editor of The Oregonian in Portland, told the Columbia Journalism Review: "More than once I've wondered what would have happened if we'd run the piece. A case can be made that it would have been alarmist and I just couldn't justify it, but you can't help but think maybe I made the wrong call."
Said Miller: "Sometimes in journalism you regret the stories you do; but most of the time you regret the ones that you didn't do."
It wouldn't have done any good. The people preparing for Sept. 11th were already here. Clinton should have attacked Al-Qaeda in the mid 1990's before they had the strength and organization to carry out a massive attack on U.S. soil.
She should have connected the dots!
/sarc
A 'buy-my book'... exclusive! I wonder if she sent a copy to Jamie GORElick?
What did the New York Times know and when did they know it?
Since the 1st WTC bombing in 1993, this country has higher alert status on both the mainland AND foreign embassies and military bases at certain times.
Surely one of those times is prior to a birthdate of the nation.
We know she didn't write the story, but did she at least contact someone like the FBI about it?
"they had been talking to one another, supposedly expressing disappointment that the United States had not chosen to retaliate more seriously against what had happened to the Cole."
Sounds to me like a thinly veiled attempt to legitimize Clinton's total lack of response to the Cole attack. "See? They WANTED us to attack them. Bill sure understood those terrorists."
Sorry, I was being sarcastic. :)
Oh, it goes back much further than that. We should have turned Iran into a burnt crisp when they took the hostages, but Jimmah preferred to treat those early terrorists as if they were actually legitimate.
Well, thank God we've learned from our mistakes and we now strip search granny at the airport while allowing anyone to stroll across the southern border. /s
If I had known something like that, you couldn't have kept my mouth shut with a staples. It wouldn't have done much good coming from a nobody like me but Miller is "respected". I guess her big money salary was more important than thousands of lies.
Or, she's lying. Which is it Judith?
Now, her story is so "impeccable" she's running to her publisher.
Run, Spot, run!
Leni
She still should have gone to the cops.
Well then you're too good at it on a SUnday morning.
LOL, I was tipped of too! OBL had been threatening us publicly for years.
And even if you did believe her, you have to ask why she didn't take this information to the proper authorities.
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