Sat 8/7/2004 12:37 PM
Leaks can be embarassing.
So, some poor senator takes it upon himself to leak information. He was the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee (what the heck do they do, anyway?).
The NSA (National Security Agency, the agency that tells the president what to worry about) had intercepted two messages in the days before the Sept. 11, 2001, disaster. These messages were in Arabic (duh) but were not translated until the day after the attack on our country. The messages said "the match is about to begin", and "tomorrow is zero hour."
Remember, folks, these messages only were specific about when. There is not mention of how, what or where. We didn't have any coded color chart to tell us how much danger we might be in back then.
Well, the poor senator is in hot water. The Senate Ethics Committee is looking into it because these messages that are intercepted are highly sensitive.
I think that in addition to being sensitive, and for all sorts of reasons they are, not the least of which is the fact that a message was intercepted, the senator has embarassed the Bush Administration. And they are pissed off. What was that senator thinking, anyway? Is it cool to have information no one else has, did it make him feel like a big shot, as if he was in charge of anything? Ah, who knows. It is slightly amusing to me because the senator is a Republican.
Yeah, I take a small perverse pleasure in this.
The news, by the way, came from an article from Associated Press reporter JEFFREY McMURRAY. I read it in my home down newspaper. I hope this link works if you are interested in seeing it for yourself.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/08/05/national1709EDT0701.DTL