In a situation like this, false modesty usually kicks in and I say something like "well, sometimes we just get lucky" but to hell with false modesty. Luck had nothing to do with this story just as luck has had nothing to do with many other stories that we all too often break long before the so-called "mainstream media."
Are we that good? Damn right we are.
On January 22, 2003, before President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, we ran a story, Role reversal: Bush wants war, Pentagon urges caution. Among the points in that story:
Sources say the White House has ordered the FBI and CIA to "find and document" links between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
"The implication is clear," grumbles one longtime FBI agent. "Find a link, any link, no matter how vague or unproven, and then use that link to justify action against Iraq."
We followed that story up the next day, January 23 with this one: Intel pros forced to fabricate Iraqi intelligence:
U.S. intelligence professionals, under pressure from the Bush administration to provide proof needed to justify war with Iraq, say they have been forced to fabricate evidence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction as well as the location of non-existent hidden chemical weapon warheads.
The fabricated documentation, shared for the first time with the White House on Thursday, provides the basis for material the administration requires to justify an attack on Iraq.
It was two years, repeat two years, before the same information appeared in mainstream media.
Last year, June 7, 2004, we reported on the U.S. government's spying on American citizens with the story: Where big brother snoops on Americans 24/7:
Despite Congressional action cutting funding, and the resignation of the program's controversial director, retired admiral John Poindexter, DARPA's TIA program is alive and well and prying into the personal business of Americans 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
"When Congress cut the funding, the Pentagon - with administration approval - simply moved the program into a 'black bag' account," says a security consultant who worked on the DARPA project. "Black bag programs don't require Congressional approval and are exempt from traditional oversight."
In addition, the super-secret National Security Agency, under an executive order signed by President Bush not long after September 11, 2001, began monitoring phone conversations and emails of American citizens even though the agency's charter limits their activities to overseas communications.
It took The New York Times more than a year to get up the guts to publish their story on domestic spying even though they knew about it at the same time.
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