"The (Other) Story Judith Miller Didn't Write" from RoryOConnor.org:
"The incident that had gotten everyone's attention [in July 2001] was a conversation between two members of Al Qaeda. 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 Qaeda operative was overheard saying to the other, `Don't worry; we're planning something so big now that the US will have to respond.'"
When she mentioned the intercept to her editor, he asked:
'You have a great first and second paragraph. What's your third?'
Miller had no response, so the story never ran. Which is unforgivable
given the headlines at the time:
June 21, 2001 Posted: 10:09 AM EDT
CNN - Osama bin Laden has produced a videotape in which he is directing his followers to prepare for fighting....
"To all the Mujahedeen, your brothers in Palestine are waiting for you, it's time to penetrate America and Israel and hit them where it hurts most," bin Laden says.
More importantly, why didn't she write the story after 9/11?
Was she afraid of embarassing her "top-level" White House source?
Go read the whole thing:
Enter Judith Miller, Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-New York Times reporter at the center of the ongoing perjury and obstruction of justice case involving former top White House official I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby. Miller spent eighty-five days in jail before finally disclosing that Libby was the anonymous source who confirmed to her that Valerie Plame was a CIA official, although Miller never wrote a story about Plame. Now, in an exclusive interview, Miller tells the details of how the attack on the Cole spurred her reporting on Al Qaeda 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 Qaeda attack, perhaps to be visited on the continental United States. Ultimately, however, Miller never wrote that story either. But two months later --on September 11 -- Miller and her editor at the Times, Stephen Engelberg, another Pulitzer Prize winner, both remembered and regretted the story they "didn't do."
Any bets who that "top-level" White House source could be?
In addition to interviewing Judy, the authors also spoke with her editor, Stephen Engelberg:
Engelberg told us the same thing. "On September 11th, I was standing on the platform at the 125th Street station," he remembered ruefully more than four years later. "I was with a friend and we both saw the World Trade Center burning and saw the second one hit. `It's Al-Qaeda!' I yelled. `We had a heads up!' So yes, I do still have regrets."
You think? Anyway, here is the little noticed Columbia Journalism Review article the authors mention:
In July of 2001, Steve Engelberg, then an editor at The New York Times, looked up to see Judy Miller standing at his desk. As Engelberg recalls, Miller had just learned from a source about an intercepted communication between two Al Qaeda members who were discussing how disappointed they were that the United States had never attempted to retaliate for the bombing of the USS Cole. Not to worry, one of them said, soon they were going to do something so big that the U.S. would have to retaliate.
Miller was naturally excited about the scoop and wanted the Times to go with the story. Engelberg, himself a veteran intelligence reporter, wasn't so sure. There had been a lot of chatter about potential attacks; how did they know this was anything other than big talk? Who were these guys? What country were they in? How had we gotten the intercept? Miller didn't have any answers and Engelberg didn't think they could publish without more context. Miller agreed to try and find out more, but in the end the story never ran.
Today, more than four years after 9/11, Engelberg, now managing editor of The Oregonian in Portland, still thinks about that story. "More than once I've wondered what would have happened if we'd run the piece?" he says. "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."
Made the wrong call? You think?