Brian Ross was on Fox and Friends this morning. He said that Chertoff doesn’t go around talking about gut feelings. Said that he (Chertoff) has hard information- much more info than Ross or anyone else in the media has. Ross said that the reports coming in are troubling to those looking at them, reminding them of the level of concern in the summer of 2001, but that they are taking them more seriously now.
Regarding the White House situation room meeting on Thursday, Ross said that Washington has meetings regularly, but that this is unusual. The point was brought up that if it were so important, why would it be announced. He said that it was not announced. He also said that it is a follow-up meeting and that the first one was last Friday. He said that every key agency was asked what to do to minimize the effects of an attack and that Thursday is when they come back to give their report. Ross was asked if he knows things that he hasn’t reported. He answered that there are some things that they (ABC) have been asked not to report and currently they are not reporting these things.
Very interesting. Thanks.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/07/white-house-fbi.html
White House, FBI Agents Race to Disrupt ‘Summer of ‘07’ Threat
July 11, 2007 2:18 PM
Brian Ross, Richard Esposito & Chris Isham Report:
Senior law enforcement officials said today that the growing signs of a “Summer of ‘07” terror attack on the U.S. have led the FBI to dispatch dozens of agents to track down new leads across the country.
The threat has also led the White House to begin a weekly meeting of senior law enforcement and intelligence officials.
The group met last Friday and will meet tomorrow in the White House Situation Room at 1 p.m., according to the officials.
The White House has described the meeting as “not urgent” and “regular,” but law enforcement officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com the new weekly sessions, to be held every Thursday, were designed specifically to counter the summer threat.
“The Thursday meetings will be regular, but the first one is tomorrow,” said one official.
Dozens of FBI agents have been given a two-week deadline to run down more than 700 leads on an FBI “worry list,” developed in the wake of the failed attacks in London and Glasgow. The list includes some 100 specific leads in the New York area, senior law enforcement officials also told ABCNews.com.
Although the White House says there is no credible, imminent threat to the United States, the origin of the intelligence that a small group of al Qaeda terrorists was headed to the United States came from a credible intelligence source, who in the past has been reliable, officials said.
The source of the intelligence specified the small cell was traveling from Pakistan.
The new threat comes as FBI agents were already trying to sort through a mountain of e-mails, jihadist message board postings, telephone intercepts and human source intelligence, in an effort to pluck an intelligence gem from the background of “chatter” louder than has been heard in any recent summer season.
There is so much terrorist “noise” that some agents and officers have already dubbed June and July a “summer of chatter.”
Agents also have been running down financial leads and telephone records that could have linked several members of the recent failed London and Glasgow, Scotland incendiary bomb plots to North America.
Below are links to the Fox & Friends interview this morning with Brian Ross.
al Qaida in the U.S.: Is an Attack Imminent? (Part 1)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ofg4IwCSoIE
al Qaida in the U.S.: Is an Attack Imminent? (Part 2)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PKYy3dPAqE0
Thanks for the ping. I had missed B.Ross’s report this morning.
“He answered that there are some things that they (ABC) have been asked not to report...”
Yes, I saw the interview.
Thanks for posting it here, good old days.
Time to batten down the hatches I guess.
I still say Cherthoff looks like he’s been spending many a sleepless night.
Thanks for the report, GoodOldDays.
I briefly saw a crawler on FOX news this morning.
The crawler said something like “FBI has just 2 weeks to find terrorists”.
Did anyone else see a report about this, this morning?