“I had begun to hear rumors about intensified intercepts and tapping of telephones. But that was just vaguest kind of rumors in the street, indicators…I remember the weekend before July 4, 2001 in particular, because for some reason the people who were worried about Al Qaeda believed that was the weekend that there was going to be an attack on the US or on major American target somewhere. It was going to be a large, well-coordinated attack. Because of the July 4th holiday, this was an ideal opportunistic target and date for Al Qaeda. My sources also told me at that time that there had been a lot of chatter overheard -- I didn’t know specifically what that meant -- but a lot of talk about an impending attack at one time or another. And the intelligence community seemed to believe that at least a part of the attack was going to come on July 4th. So I remember that, for a lot of my sources, this was going to be a ‘lost’ weekend. Everybody was going to be working; nobody was going to take time off. And that was bad news for me because it meant I was also going to be on stand-by and I would be working too.

“I was in New York, but I remember coming down to D.C. one day that weekend, just to be around in case something happened… Misery loves company, is how I would put it. If it were going to be a stress-filled weekend, it was better to do it together. It also meant I wouldn’t have trouble tracking people down -- or as much trouble -- because as you know, some of these people can be very elusive.

“The people in the counter-terrorism (CT) office were very worried about attacks here in the United States, and that was, it struck me, another debate in the intelligence community. Because a lot of intelligence people did not believe that Al Qaeda had the ability to strike within the United States. The CT people thought they were wrong. But I got the sense at that time that the counter-terrorism people in the White House were viewed as extremist on these views.

“Everyone in Washington was very spun-up in the CT world at that time. I think everybody knew that an attack was coming –- everyone who followed this. But you know you can only ‘Cry wolf’ within a newspaper or, I imagine, within an intelligence agency, so many times before people start saying there he goes -- or there she goes -- again!

“Even that weekend, there was lot else going on. There was always a lot going on at the White House, so to a certain extent, there was that kind of ‘Cry wolf’ problem. But I got the sense that part of the reason that I was being told of what was going on was that the people in counter terrorism were trying to get the word to the President or the senior officials through the press, because they were not able to get listened to themselves.

“Sometimes, you wonder about why people tell you things and why people…we always wonder why people leak things, but that’s a very common motivation in Washington. I remember once when I was a reporter in Egypt, and someone from the Agency gave me very good material on terrorism and local Islamic groups.

“I said, ‘Why are you doing this? Why are you giving this to me?’ and he said, ‘I just can’t get my headquarters to pay attention to me but I know that if it’s from the New York Times, they’re going to give it a good read and ask me questions about it.’ And there’s also this genuine concern about how, if only the President shared the sense of panic and concern that they did, more would be done to try and protect the country.

“This was a case wherein some serious preparations were made in terms of getting the message out and responding, because at the end of that week, there was a sigh of relief. As somebody metaphorically put it: ‘They uncorked the White House champagne’ that weekend because nothing had happened. We got through the weekend… nothing had happened.

“But I did manage to have a conversation with a source that weekend. 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 Qaeda. 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. And one Al Qaeda operative was overheard saying to the other, ‘Don’t worry; we’re planning something so big now that the US will have to respond.’

“And I was obviously floored by that information. I thought it was a very good story: (1) the source was impeccable; (2) the information was specific, tying Al Qaeda operatives to, at least, knowledge of the attack of the Cole; and (3) 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.

“I remember going back to work in New York the next day and meeting with my editor Stephen Engelberg. I was rather excited, as I usually get about information of this kind, and I said, ‘Steve, I think we have a great story. And the story is that two members of Al Qaeda overheard on an intercept (and I assumed that it was the National Security Agency, because that’s who does these things) were heard complaining about the lack of American response to the Cole, but also… contemplating what would happen the next time, when there was, as they said, the impending major attack that was being planned. They said this was such a big attack that the US would have to respond.’ Then I waited.

[snip]

“It was very strange…it was a strange feeling to have written a series that virtually predicted this, and to have had not a single other reporter call, not a single other newspaper follow-up on some of the information that we had broken in that series. At the time of the series, which was published in January 2001, we had information about chemical and biological experiments at Al Qaeda camps. We had gotten the location of the camps, we had gotten satellite overhead of the camps. I had interviewed, in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda-trained people who said that they were going to get out of the ‘prison’ in Afghanistan and go back and continue their jihad. They had talked about suicide bombings. We had Jordanian intelligence say that attempts to blow up hotels, roads and tourist targets in Jordan over the millennium was part of the Al Qaeda planned attack. And yet I guess people just didn’t believe it. But I believed it. I believed it absolutely, because I’ve covered these militants for so long. There was nothing they wouldn’t do if they could do it.”