Rawstory is linking to an
Alternet interview in which former
New York Times reporter Judith Miller claims a
highly placed and reliable White House source leaked a warning of Al Qaeda attacks based on NSA intelligence within the United States two months before 9/11.
Miller was working on a series on Al Qaida started after it became known that the US had intelligence regarding the 2000 attack on the USS Cole before it was happened. The articles claim Miller will reveal "how the attack on the Cole spurred her reporting on Al Qaida and led her, in July 2001, to a still-anonymous top-level White House source, who shared top-secret NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) concerning an even bigger impending Al Qaida attack, perhaps to be visited on the continental United States."
Why didn't Miller report the impending attacks?
more on the flip
In 2000-2001, Miller was investigating what would become a special report on Al Qaida and had come to the conclusion after the attack on the USS Cole, that the group was
not the bunch of amateurs many in Washington claimed.
According to Judy:
"I had begun to hear rumors about intensified intercepts and tapping of telephones. But that was just vaguest kind of rumors in the street, indicators ... I remember the weekend before July 4, 2001, in particular, because for some reason the people who were worried about Al Qaida believed that was the weekend that there was going to be an attack on the United States or on a major American target somewhere. It was going to be a large, well-coordinated attack. Because of the July 4 holiday, this was an ideal opportunistic target and date for Al Qaida.
Miller mentions that the White House Counter Terrorism unit was trying to get the message through to the White House in order to prepare them for a coordinated attack within the US. They apparently got through, since when that attack did not happen on July 4, Miller reports she was told, "'They uncorked the White House champagne' that weekend because nothing had happened. We got through the weekend ... nothing had happened."
"But I did manage to have a conversation with a source that weekend. 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. And 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.'"
Miller was stunned by the story:
"And I was obviously floored by that information. I thought it was a very good story: (1) the source was impeccable; (2) the information was specific, tying Al Qaida operatives to, at least, knowledge of the attack on the Cole; and (3) they were warning that something big was coming, to which the United States would have to respond. This struck me as a major page one-potential story.
When Miller ran the story by her editor on the Al Qaida series, Stephen Engelberg, now editor of The Oregonian, they agreed that the story was explosive, but that Miller didn't have enough information to run with the story. She agreed to get more and the story was shelved.
Neither Engelberg nor Miller pursued the story further but felt that but for additional confirming information, they would have had a huge scoop. Here's ending quote: "You know, sometimes in journalism you regret the stories you do, but most of the time you regret the ones that you didn't do."
I'm guessing Judy has lots of regrets on both scores.
This interview raises many questions, particularly in those facts which contradict the Bush Administration's claim that "no one could have predicted" 9/11. That look on George Bush's face as he's reading My Pet Goat may have less to do with fear for the country than fear of getting caught ignoring sound warnings from within the White House.
Does anyone else think Judith Miller is letting those aspens twist? Is she getting even for Libby's recent assertions in court filings? Is she swiping back at the tarnish her reputation has taken in TreasonGate? Or just fulfilling her usual grandiose vision of herself. According to the interview, Engelberg backs up her story.....
UPDATE:
Does anyone else think it's interesting that the NSA knew about the potential for a 9/11 attack without access to the phone records of millions of Americans?