Rantingprofs working overtime

Rantingprofs has been doing some detetctive work on the terror alerts. Remember the big deal to the press has been the fact that the administration should have told them up front that the information the alerts were based on was old. This then morphed into the "political ploy" angle, as if the administration was trying to make points by releasing the story when they did.

Turns out the administration did tell the press the surveillance data were old, right up front. The press either deliberately chose to ignore it or missed it completely, either of which doesn't speak well for the competence of the news media. According to Cori, "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.' " (Emphasis mine.)

Remember, it was Monday when the press "broke" the story that the information was dated. Yet they had the information on Sunday and should have understood the threat. So what's going on here? Based on past experience, it's easy to believe that the press has an agenda that works at cross purposes to the administration.

In a second post Cori points out that the response of a Federal Air Marshall, when questioned about the events on Flight 327 doesn't quite square with his actions during the flight.