"I learned that the Al Qaida Cole attack was not exactly a hugely efficient
operation, and I learned later on that there had been an earlier attempt to take
out the Cole or another American ship that had floundered badly because of poor
Al Qaida training. Because of incidents like that -- you know, overloading a
dinghy that was supposed to go have gone out to the ship and blow it up, so that
the dinghy would sink -- people tended to discount Al Qaida. They said, 'Oh,
they are just a bunch of amateurs." But I'd never thought that. I never believed
that. And the people I was covering didn't think that …

"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 Qaida believed that was the weekend
that there was going to be an attack on the United States or on a major American
target somewhere. It was going to be a large, well-coordinated attack. Because
of the July 4 holiday, this was an ideal opportunistic target and date for Al
Qaida.

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
4. 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."

"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 Qaida 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 Qaida. 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 Qaida
operative was overheard saying to the other, 'Don't worry; we're planning
something so big now that the U.S. 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 Qaida operatives to, at least, knowledge of the attack on 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."

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald spent more than half a day Friday at
the offices of Patton Boggs, the law firm representing Karl Rove.

During the course of that meeting, Fitzgerald served attorneys for former Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove with an indictment charging the embattled White House official with perjury and lying to investigators related to his role in the CIA leak case, and instructed one of the attorneys to tell Rove that he has 24 business hours to get his affairs in order, high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said Saturday morning.

Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, did not return a call for comment. Sources said Fitzgerald was in Washington, DC, Friday and met with Luskin for about 15 hours to go over the charges against Rove, which include perjury and lying to investigators about how and when Rove discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson was a covert CIA operative and whether he shared that information with reporters, sources with direct knowledge of the meeting said.

It was still unknown Saturday whether Fitzgerald harged Rove with a more serious obstruction of justice charge. Sources close to the case said Friday that it appeared very likely that an obstruction charge against Rove would be included with charges of perjury and lying to investigators.

An announcement by Fitzgerald is expected to come this week, sources close to the case said. However, the day and time is unknown. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the special prosecutor was unavailable for comment. In the past, Samborn said he could not comment on the case.

The grand jury hearing evidence in the Plame Wilson case met Friday on other matters while Fitzgerald spent the entire day at Luskin's office. The meeting was a closely guarded secret and seems to have taken place without the knowledge of the media.