|
|
|||
|
|||
|
|
Insider Report: Judith Miller: I Was Tipped Off About 9/11 Special From NewsMax's Most Informed Sources
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories): 1. Judith Miller: I Was Tipped Off About 9/11 Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter at the center of the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby case, reveals that she received advance word about a terrorist plot that turned out to be 9/11 but the Times spiked the story. Miller spent 85 days in jail before finally disclosing that Libby was the source who confirmed to her that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. Miller who's no longer with the Times never wrote a story about Plame. But she's more troubled by another story that didn't run the one about 9/11. Miller began investigating al-Qaida after the terrorist group's October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. Over the weekend before July 4, 2001, there were strong indications that terrorists were planning to attack the U.S. or a major American target elsewhere, Miller said in an interview with Scott Malone and Rory O'Connor that appeared on the Web site NavySEALS.com. The attack never materialized. But that weekend "I did manage to have a conversation with a source," she told the interviewers.
Story Continues Below
"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. "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.' "I was obviously floored by that information. I thought it was a very good story the source was impeccable, the information was specific, tying Al Qaida operatives to, at least, knowledge of the attack on the Cole, and 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." However, when Miller met with her editor Stephen Engelberg, he was critical, noting that Miller didn't know who the operatives were, where they were overheard or what attack they were planning. "At that point I realized I didn't have the whole story," Miller said. She continued to probe, but couldn't turn up enough information to satisfy Engelberg. The story never ran. And two months later came al-Qaida's September 11 attacks. Engelberg, now managing editor of The Oregonian in Portland, told the Columbia Journalism Review: "More than once I've wondered what would have happened if we'd run the piece. 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." Said Miller: "Sometimes in journalism you regret the stories you do; but most of the time you regret the ones that you didn't do."
2. ABC Complains Government Traces Reporters' Calls ABC News announced that an unidentified "senior federal law enforcement official" warned two network reporters that "the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources." The unnamed source allegedly told them: "It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick." ABC correspondents Brian Ross and Richard Esposito said that their network "does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls." Moreover, they said other unnamed sources alerted them that "phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation." They also stated that "one former official was asked to sign a document stating he was not a confidential source for New York Times reporter James Risen." Risen exposed the NSA program monitoring calls between al-Qaida and terrorist suspects in the U.S. and President Bush has called that reporting "shameful." Some have called the NSA monitoring an unwarranted intrusion into the lives of Americans, while others have castigated the Times for alerting terrorists about a program designed to protect the U.S. from terror attacks. ABC acknowledged that their reports on the CIA's secret prisons in Romania and Poland "were known to have upset CIA officials." The CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan, ABC claims. A former counterterrorism chief at the CIA, Vincent Cannistraro, told The New York Sun that FBI sources have confirmed to him that reporters' calls are being tracked as part of the probe into the leaking of classified information. "It is widespread and it may entail more than those three media outlets," he said. At the end of their report, the ABC reporters admitted that "under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers." They also conceded that the unnamed official who warned them about the monitoring said there "was no indication our phones were being tapped so the content of the conversation could be recorded." Many of the readers sending in "User Comments" to the ABC Web site that posted the Ross-Esposito article were harshly critical of the network and other media that have revealed classified information. Wrote one: "Good! I hope they do find out who is leaking national security info to the press." And another wrote: "Maybe ABC News better stop leaking classified information. This only helps our enemies."
3. Peruvian Candidate Calls Chavez a 'Scoundrel' Peruvian presidential front-runner Alan Garcia has accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of having launched a "strategy to dominate South America." Garcia, a populist who was president of Peru from 1985 to 1990, charged that Chavez has given support to his opponent in the June 4 runoff, nationalist Ollanta Humala, in an attempt to make Peru a "Chavista republic." After Garcia recently called Chavez a "scoundrel," Chavez said the Peruvian candidate was a "rascal" and a "thief," according to the Uruguay-based MercoPress News Agency. The latest polls show that Garcia leads Humala by 12 percentage points. The two are vying to replace President Alejandro Toledo, who has accused Chavez of "political trading" in South America with his "oil checkbook." Chavez said Toledo acted as an "office boy" for the "empire of evil" in signing a free trade agreement with the U.S. Garcia continued his attack on Chavez in a recent interview reported by the Orlando Sentinel, saying the Venezuelan strongman has a habit of "meddling and imposing his outdated model on us, a model that is only supported by the amount of money he has."
Garcia alleged that Chavez is using his oil revenue to carry out a "domino strategy" in Latin America aimed an encircling U.S.-backed Colombia with "Chavista republics," according to the Sentinel. "Now the domino is headed toward Peru," Garcia said.
The Sentinel concludes: "The good news is that if Garcia wins, he may lead a Latin American reaction against Chavez's imperialism.' If there is one Latin American politician with the rhetorical skills to challenge Chavez's daily verbal salvos, it's Peru's Garcia." 4. 'President Al Gore' Addresses Nation The May 13 installment of "Saturday Night Live" kicked off with an address to the nation from "President Al Gore" that was in fact a thinly veiled spoof of the Bush administration. Appearing in a mock-up of the Oval Office and assuming his customary grave expression, Gore began his address: "Good evening, my fellow Americans. In 2000 when you overwhelmingly made the decision to elect me as your 43rd president, I knew the road ahead would be difficult. We have accomplished so much yet challenges lie ahead." Then Gore, who stars in a documentary about global warming called "An Inconvenient Truth," told the audience: "In the last six years we have been able to stop global warming. No one could have predicted the negative results of this. Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack. As you know, these renegade glaciers have already captured parts of upper Michigan and northern Maine, but I assure you: We will not let the glaciers win." Trying to milk laughs from the recent gasoline price crisis, Gore said: "Right now, in the 2nd week of May 2006, we are facing perhaps the worst gas crisis in history. We have way too much gasoline. Gas is down to $0.19 a gallon and the oil companies are hurting. I know that I am partly to blame by insisting that cars run on trash. "I am therefore proposing a federal bailout to our oil companies because hey, if it were the other way around, you know the oil companies would help us." He continued: "On a positive note, we worked hard to save welfare, fix Social Security and of course provide the free universal health care we all enjoy today. "But all this came at a high cost. As I speak, the gigantic national budget surplus is down to a perilously low $11 trillion dollars." Mocking his notorious comments as vice president when he appeared to take credit for inventing the Internet, Gore said a weather disaster in the U.S. was unlikely "because of the Anti-Hurricane and Tornado Machine I was instrumental in helping to develop." But his administration has also seen some "setbacks," he admitted. "Unfortunately, the confirmation process for Supreme Court Justice Michael Moore was bitter and divisive. However, I could not be more proud of how the House and Senate pulled together to confirm the nomination of Chief Justice George Clooney." He added: "Baseball, our national pastime, still lies under the shadow of steroid accusations. But I have faith in baseball commissioner George W. Bush."
5. Solzhenitsyn Decries U.S. Efforts to 'Encircle' Russia Nobel Prize-winning author and former Gulag prisoner Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent nearly 20 years in the U.S. after leaving the Soviet Union. Now he's back in Russia and attacking the country that sheltered him. In a recent interview Solzhenitsyn criticized the U.S., and its NATO allies, for what he called "an effort to totally encircle Russia and destroy its sovereignty." The 87-year-old writer told the newspaper Moscow News: "Although it is clear that Russia, as it exists, represents no threat to NATO, the latter is methodically developing its military deployment in Eastern Europe and on Russia's southern flank." He pointed to the pro-Western opposition victories in the former Soviet republics of Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine as evidence that NATO's influence was spreading closer to Russia. Russia has been further troubled by NATO's 2004 expansion into the Baltic states and by American military bases in former Soviet states in Central Asia. And Solzhenitsyn has claimed that the U.S. "occupies" Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a campaign directed against Russia. Solzhenitsyn, who experienced first-hand the horrors of totalitarianism as a prisoner of Soviet prison camps, also criticized Russia for seeking to emulate Western democracy. "We have opted for the most thoughtless form of imitation," he said in the interview. "And yes, present-day Western democracy is in a serious state of crisis, and it's still impossible to foresee how it will try to overcome it." Solzhenitsyn chronicled life in Soviet prison camps in "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "The Gulag Archipelago," and was deported from the U.S.S.R. in 1974. He took up residence in Vermont, but returned to Russia in 1994. His recent outrage over the perceived threat of the West "encircling" Russia is "sad," according to a commentary in the Guardian: "Solzhenitsyn was brave enough to tell the truth about Stalin's slave camps, and a good enough writer to tell it well. "It is sad and disappointing now and puzzling that he can't acknowledge how deep a scar those camps left on the populations which have, in whole or in part, turned their backs on Russia; how the hundreds of thousands of Balts, Ukrainians and other East Europeans killed or imprisoned by Stalinism might just have encouraged a yen, in some of them at least, for NATO membership."
Editor's Notes:
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
Print Page 
Forward Page 
|
| All Rights Reserved © 2008 NewsMax.Com |