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| The Story Judith Miller Didn't Write |
| 2006-05-30 |
| 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 |
| #3 There has been plenty of time in the last five years to do one of those big background pieces that the New York Times so prides itself on, and which get nominated for all sorts of prestigious industry prizes. There is still time to do these stories, which are important, and she still isn't writing them. There continues to be a choice made in these cases that the stories weren't/aren't actually all that important, and dear Ms. Miller didn't/doesn't care enough to fight for them. It's the farmer's apology to the pigs, once again. I'm not impressed. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-05-30 08:54 |
| #2 This is a logical dead end those that heard about 9.11 before hand didn't believe it or it got lost among the 'noise' that is all the other planned attacks attacks are planned all the time, every day of the week but not half of them happen, not even 10% nobody knows which ones will or won't be acted on nobody is to blame for 911 except the people that planned and did it. anything else is a red herring designed to turn the blame inwards towards america instead of outwards towards the West-hating islamist culture that nurtured, funded and actioned it. |
| Posted by: Anon1 2006-05-30 08:24 |
| #1 Rory O’Connor: NYT’s Managing Editor “Heard Nothing” about 911 Story that Got Away - this follow-up is pretty damming of the NY Times. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2006-05-30 00:36 |