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The Story Judith Miller Didn't Write
The Teaser Lead-In:On October 12, 2000, the guided missile destroyer USS Cole pulled into harbor for refueling in Aden, Yemen. Less than two hours later, suicide bombers Ibrahim al-Thawr and Abdullah al-Misawa approached the ship's port side in a small inflatable craft laden with explosives and blew a 40-by-40-foot gash in it, killing seventeen sailors and injuring thirty-nine others. The attack on the Cole, organized and carried out by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist group, was a seminal but still murky and largely misunderstood event in America's ongoing �Long War.� Two weeks prior, military analysts associated with an experimental intelligence program known as ABLE DANGER had warned top officials of the existence of an active Al Qaeda cell in Aden, Yemen. And two days before the attack, they had conveyed �actionable intelligence� of possible terrorist activity in and around the port of Aden to General Pete Schoomaker, then Commander in Chief of the United States Special Operation Command (SOCOM). The same information was also conveyed to a top intelligence officer at the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), headed by the newly appointed General Tommy Franks. As CENTCOM commander, Franks oversaw all US Armed Forces operations in a twenty five-country region that included Yemen, as well as the Fifth Fleet to which the Cole was tasked. It remains unclear what action, if any, top officials at SOCOM and CENTCOM took in response to the ABLE DANGER warnings about planned Al Qaeda activities in Aden harbor. None of the officials involved has ever spoken about the pre-attack warnings, and a post-attack forensic analysis of the episode remains highly classified and off-limits within the bowels of the Pentagon. Subsequent investigations exonerated the Cole's commander, Kirk Lippold, but Lippold's career has been ruined nonetheless. He remains in legal and professional limbo, with a recommended promotion and new command held up for the past four years by political concerns and maneuvering. Meanwhile, no disciplinary action was ever taken against any SOCOM or CENTCOM officials. General Schoomaker was later promoted out of retirement to Chief of Staff, United States Army, and General Franks went on to lead the combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. 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.� -ROC and WSM Interview with Judy Miller: Now click the link and read the interview Posted by: 3dc 2006-05-30 |
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