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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."
So they couldn't connect the dots.
Our government had just come off the Clinton Rock Star train where all security departments were in an state of the noncompliant Gorlick/Clinton/Reno/Albright WALL - no one would take the fall - certainly not Sandy Berger. Gore's refusal to give up and admit defeat left the country in limbo for far too long. The Bush administration was not up and running and when it did take over, too many Clinton people were left in key positions and continued to obstruct to save their sorry rears. America took last place as Al Gore would have them do anyway had he won.
thousands of lies should be lives.
freudian slip?
Interesting. After all, it wasn't the attack that did major damage to the United States -- it has been the response.
Islamic nutjobs are planning? or have planned? or will plan? "something big" against America?
Well hell- I'm shocked!
(I'm not shocked...)
It seems to imply that if we had only responded to the Cole, we might not have had 9/11.
They wanted to be attacked?
Miller is seeking another five minutes of attention. IMO
Oy vey. Alarmist. Wouldn't want to look anything other than cynically detached now would we.?
what a loopy video... just because they don't find any remains at the Pa crash site ... a plane crashes nose first into the ground at several hundred mph, you're NOT going to find remains... so where are the passengers from flight 93 anyway since they landed in cleveland ... good grief! there's always some pud out there who is going to be irresponsible and lead grieving people to false hope
I thought Kerry knew. Wasn't he the one who received the information from an inspector at Logan airport but he refused to do anything about it?
Anyone want to bet that if he runs in 2008, this information will come to the surface?
I think the source in the article is a US Govt. source...they "overheard" two AQ guys on the phone...
Grandson's rousted me early this morning. :)
If this is true, why did the NY Slimes spike the story? Didn't they know that the American public had a "right to know?" Scumbags.
US Govt--could mean almost anyone, including some of the anti-Bush, anti-US hacks that remained on the payroll long after Clinton left office. We'll see. Seems she should have sounded the alarm, if she thought it was such a great story.
Any editor of the Boregonian is a lying card carrying Commie. This is just more mud thrown against the wall by some lefties.
If it were true it would just show how effective the Reno Wall was.
Pray for W and Our Troops
It seems that to the NY Times, the only things the American people have "the right to know" are things that are damaging to the President and to the country; things that might be helpful should be spiked.
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