In case you guys haven't noticed, the 9/11 Timeline has gone from a habit of saving up new entries and posting them in big batches to dribbling out a few every day (except on weekends). Now that we have some more volunteers (including a couple who post here) we have enough material to keep up a constant stream. You can see the list of most recent entries here under the "recent added events" tab:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_projectIn any case, I'm particularly intrigued by the story behind this new entry:
June 30-July 1, 2001: New York Times Reporter Told Al-Qaeda Is ‘Planning Something So Big the US Will Have to Respond,’ but Fails to Publish Warning
New York Times reporter Judith Miller learns her government counterterrorism sources are worried that al-Qaeda is going to attack a US target on the Fourth of July holiday. There has been an increase in chatter about an impending attack. In 2005, Miller will recall, “Everyone in Washington was very spun-up in the counterterrorism world at that time. I think everybody knew that an attack was coming—everyone who followed this. ... I got the sense that part of the reason that I was being told of what was going on was that the people in counterterrorism were trying to get the word to the president or the senior officials through the press, because they were not able to get listened to themselves.” She has a conversation with a still-anonymous top-level White House source who reveals there is some concern about a top-secret NSA intercept between two al-Qaeda operatives. She explains, “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 (USS) 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.’ 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-Qaeda 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.” Miller tells her editor Stephen Engelberg about the story the next day. But Engelberg says, “You have a great first and second paragraph. What’s your third?” Miller finds a second source to confirm the same details, but can’t find out any more (though later she will learn from her first source that the conversation occurred in Yemen). Miller later regrets not following through more because she “had a book coming out” as well as other stories and that there wasn’t a “sense of immediacy” about the information. In 2005, Engelberg will confirm Miller’s story and agree that he wanted more specifics before running the story. Engelberg also later wonders “maybe I made the wrong call,” asking, “More than once I’ve wondered what would have happened if we’d run the piece?” The New York Times has yet to mention the warning in all of their post-9/11 reporting and the 9/11 Commission has never mentioned anything about the warning either. In 2005, Miller will spend 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal a source and then leave the New York Times after widespread criticism about her reporting. (AlterNet, 5/18/2006; Editor & Publisher, 5/18/2006; Columbia Journalism Review, 9/2005)
---
Given all that has come out about Miller since, I suspect there's more to this story than has been revealed. Imagine all the lives that could have been saved had the New York Times published a page one story like this in the summer of 2001. If nothing else, a lot more people would have had a better clue to leave the WTC. Also, I strongly suspect that the warning came from the phone in Yemen owned by Khalid Almihdhar's father in law, since Miller says the tip came from a conversation recorded in Yemen. That phone was such a reliable source for al-Qaeda leads that the book Looming Tower points out that before 9/11 the FBI had a big chart detailing where all the calls from that phone were coming or going from and tracked down all the resulting leads they could.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
