TIME: Al Quaida Stopped NYC Gas Attack 2003

[Annie]

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

Sunday, Jun 18, 2006
Al-Qaeda Cell Planned to Attack Subway With Poison Gas, Says New Book
Exclusive Excerpt: Author Ron Suskind reveals how officials learned about a cell that came within weeks of striking New York City
By RON SUSKIND

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:

 

[Annie]

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

Some discussion with links:
http://stoptheaclu.com/archives/2006/06/17/al-qaeda-had-plans-to-release-poison-gas-in-ny-subway/

Allah Pundit says the point to take away is Al Qaeda has crude WMD capabilities. Have a great evening!

Suitably Flip feels better and better about that 40% cut in New York’s federal anti-terror funding.

AJ Strata wonders if Time and Suskind expose a critical US intelligence asset inside Al Qaeda’s organization simply to make money? It seems likely - sadly. But hey, I’m sure they think it was worth the Pulitzer to reveal we have a CIA mole inside Al Qaeda.

I wonder if this will change the ACLU’s mind about random searches in the NY Subway. Time says they will have more tomorrow, but the main question will remain: Why was it called off?

Jeff Goldstein:

My preliminary thoughts are these: whatever you happen to feel about George Bush, one thing is clear: When it comes to defending the homeland against al Qaeda, he has not hesitated to act in the decisive way he and his advisors see fit. To that end, he has proven himself unafraid to use substantive military force, and largely immune to the opinions of both the western media and international elites. Whether or not this factored into al Qaeda’s thinking is dubious. But I have long believed that one of the reasons we haven’t seen the kind of attacks here that we see in, say, Israel, is that the US, should it ever decide to go on the full offensive, cannot be restrained—particularly if public opinion shifts toward a desire to see the enemy eradicated, even if doing so requires a shift in the collective moral calculus of the nation.
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Macsmind reminds us that we should take this news with a grain of salt.

Back in 2004, Powerline caught Suskind perpetrating a hoax with his hit book on Bush, using proven liar Ex Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil as a witness.​