The Right Way and the Wrong Way

You see, The Clinton White House did it the way you're SUPPOSED to do it. The intelligence community followed leads - CLANDESTINELY - and thwarted the millennium bomb attack on LAX. Quietly. Effectively. To the point that I'm willing to bet more than half of Americans still don't even know it happened.

(Flashback: March, 2001 - yes, six months before 9/11)

Algerian planned millennium attack

Prosecutors Tuesday said an Algerian national planned to bomb New Year's 2000 celebrations in the United States, but authorities foiled the plot in a "law enforcement success story."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Gonzalez outlined the government's case in opening statements against Ahmed Ressam, 33, who authorities say has ties to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network.

The Algerian national was arrested in Port Angeles, Wash., on Dec. 14, 1999, after crossing the Canada-U.S. border with a car allegedly loaded with bomb-making material.

That's called protecting America without scaring it senseless.

Today, the Bush White House screams its intel from the rooftops the nanosecond they get information to prove to voters that they're working on the terrorist problem.

We call that reckless and irresponsible opportunism - and so does the most effective country we have in trying to nail this thing.

The evidence of this administration's inability to protect us is really piling up. It's time for them to start taking the advice Bill O'Reilly likes to give us: "JUST SHUT UP."

Pakistani sources: U.S. leak scuttled al Qaeda sting

The effort by U.S. officials to justify raising the terror alert level last week may have shut down an important source of information that has already led to a series of al Qaeda arrests, Pakistani intelligence sources say.

Until U.S. officials leaked the arrest of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan to reporters, Pakistan had been using him in a sting operation to track down al Qaeda operatives around the world, the sources said.

In background briefings with journalists last week, unnamed U.S. government officials said it was the capture of Khan that provided the information that led Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to announce a higher terror alert level.

The unnamed U.S. officials leaked Khan's name along with confirmation that most of the surveillance data was three or four years old, arguing that its age was irrelevant because al Qaeda planned attacks so far in advance.