WAS THE AGE OF THE FILES STATED RIGHT OFF THE BAT?

When asked on Fox News Sunday if it would have been better if Tom Ridge had just said right up front that the intelligence the alerts were based on, although newly acquired, was several years old, White House homeland security advisor Fran Townsend says that he did, or at least that the background briefings from "senior officials" that day did say that -- but that only the LA Times reported the fact.

Now, I can't find an article in the LA Times that mentions it on that Sunday. But on that Monday, the 3rd, sure enough the LA Times states:

Two senior counterterrorism officials said they were not surprised at the lack of information about plotters, describing Al Qaeda's penchant for compartmentalizing operations. But both said the surveillance files offered strong evidence that Al Qaeda had been plotting attacks over a period of years that could be launched at any time.

"They have the information, they have the data, they have a library of this stuff and they can just pull it out and use it," one said. "When you combine that with the [recent intelligence], it shows there is a concerted effort at the highest levels of Al Qaeda to do something devastating to us, in the U.S., before or during the election."

That makes it clear that the intelligence dates back and that the fact that it does doesn't impact the level of threat at all.

The articles from the Times and Post that kicked off the whole issue of wondering if the alerts were overreactions appeared the same day. But, again, and this keeps getting lost in the clutter, where did they get their information from?

Dana Priest's article is incredibly confusing on this, because it combines quotes from six sources she interviewed who won't give their names, hence are "senior officials" and quotes from an official background briefing provided by Ridge with his analysts, and are thus "senior officials." Which quotes are from which? Except for one quote it's almost impossible to tell.

But look at that one quote:

Two senior intelligence officials who briefed reporters on Sunday said the material showed al Qaeda operatives had cased the buildings both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I think the indications are that this has been a very longstanding effort on the part of al Qaeda," one official said Sunday, "that it dates from before 9/11, it continued after 9/11 and based on what it is that we are concerned about, we know about in terms of al Qaeda's plans and intentions that it probably continues even today."

In other words, Ridge didn't say so himself, directly to the American people, and you can fault him for that. But he had his people say that directly to the reporters they were tasked with briefing. So what's the damn problem here? If that wasn't immediately and clearly explained to the American people then it can only be because the press fell down on the job -- translating what it learns in background briefings to the American people -- and this is an utterly manufactured and artificial situation.

Comments

[alcibiades]

Well what do you expect. Your interview with Colonel Randall Larsen makes it clear that many of the reporters covering this beat have no clue how intelligence works; also, they're point scoring off of Howard Dean in their attempt to further help vote Bush out of office; and the'd rather think of the "clever" response to the situation, than the constructive one, and end up making fools of themselves. Without of course admitting it.

God, I'd hate to be with them in an emergency.

These kinds of alerts are given to the public quite frequently in Israel. Reporters there aren't assinine enough to think the point of the exercise is for them to score points that show off their intelligence and ends up only highlighting their ignorance of the matter. People take the alerts seriously because it is life or death. Something that the MSM here haven't gotten through their heads yet. Do they yet realize we are in a war?

[Franco Alemán]

Let me be a bit cynical here: by reporting on the alerts the first day, and then about it being 'old' the next day, as if they had discovered is has 2 effects:

- it allows them to present themselves as maverick investigative reporters who are unearthing some secret information, and

- most important, doing it so it is harmful to Bush. Remember, they don't want him to be reelected. This may not be a 'decisive' issue, but it adds up to all other things.