Time: How an Al-Qaeda Cell Planned a Poison Gas Attack on the New York Cit

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1205321,00.html

Two months had passed since 9/11, and at the highest levels of government, officials were worrying about a second wave of attacks. CIA Director George Tenet was briefing Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in the White House Situation Room on the agency's latest concern: intelligence reports suggesting that Osama bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had met with a radical Pakistani nuclear scientist around a campfire in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Absorbing the possibility that al-Qaeda was trying to acquire a nuclear weapon, Cheney remarked that America had to deal with a new type of threat—what he called a "low-probability, high-impact event"—and the U.S. had to do it "in a way we haven't yet defined," writes author Ron Suskind in his new book, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11. And then Cheney defined it: "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response." Suskind writes, "So, now spoken, it stood: a standard of action that would frame events and responses from the Administration for years to come."

In the following excerpt, Suskind describes the government's reaction to information about a different WMD threat: hydrogen cyanide gas. As in the rest of the book, he illuminates the constant interplay and occasional tension between the "invisibles," the men and women in the intelligence and uniformed services actually fighting the war on terrorism, and the "notables," high-level officials who "tell us that everything will be fine, or that we should be very afraid, or both." Suskind, who won the Pulitzer Prize as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal, wrote the 2004 best seller The Price of Loyalty, an inside look at the Bush Administration. In The One Percent Doctrine, Suskind finds that the notables and the invisibles have at least one thing in common: a "profound sense of urgency." Time's exclusive excerpt:

In late May 2002, the National Security Agency had a gift for the CIA, and NSA Director Mike Hayden was on the phone to deliver it. They had as precious a dispatch as any since 9/11.

It was a communication from a designee of Osama bin Laden. The al-Qaeda chief had not used a cell phone or satellite phone since 1998. He was very careful. A ring of deputies, below the level of an Ayman al-Zawahiri or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, carried messages for him. The United States had determined who some of them were. They made calls, or sent e-mails, on bin Laden's behalf.

[Minnesota Libra]

1. NSA "...had a gift for the CIA" "NSA Director..." delivered it...........

.....that pretty much says it all.:eyes: It's absolutely amazing what the NSA can come up with right when the info is needed. I'd need more sources than just this if I were to believe this.:shrug:

[madrchsod]

2. what about the anthrax killer?

nobody knows -nobody cares

[Benhurst]

3. Ho-hum. This kind of fiction is best left to Tom Clancy. NT

[pretzel4gore]

4. what about northern vigilance/guardian etc?

the fact these preplanned air defense exercises were being run exactly at the time the supposedly hijacked jets were going to wtc etc, plus the FAct THE PIGMEDIA has never looked at the coincidence, says 911 WAS STAGED! Also the 'al cia do' (can't the gopig-preferred 'al queda' spelling be banned from DU? when the fake cia sponsored terror group was first publicly mentioned, it was 'al ciado' and that name says it all, so why assist the pigs?) is too easy as a boogeyman when these inexplicable events (wtc #7 falling shortly after larry silversteen told fire dept to pull the plug on it etc) were going on all over the place. Most importantly is the well coordinated media response to the tragedy: they knew it was going to happen, and had prepared to tell the cud chewers dupes what they thought they thought they THOUGHT they THOUGHT THEY THOUGHT; before we run off chasing ficticious boogeys, maybe these concrete criminals ahould be examined... also time magazine is the heart o darkness, pigmedia-wise

[leveymg]

5. A mubtakkar, indeed

Interesting how we don't hear about this until BushCo desperately needs a boost.

By the way, there's a reason the poison gas plot was scrubbed by the AQ #2. It doesn't work very well, as the failure of the attack in the Japanese subways showed.

Wonder whatever happened to "Ali"? So much for the lie that US intel never had a source inside AQ.

Do I smell the scent of BS coming from BushCo? Why muck around with amateurs. AQ should have gone to them for the design.

[occuserpens]

6. Two more conspiracy theories

2006-06-17 Two more conspiracy theories