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Trump and Noem Suppress Information on Iranian Threat to Homeland

Somewhere inside the federal government right now, there may well be analysts writing the modern equivalent of the “Bin Laden Determined to Strike” memo

Julie Roginsky Mar 8 ∙

On August 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified intelligence briefing titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.” The CIA warned that al-Qaeda wanted to conduct attacks on American soil and noted suspicious activity consistent with preparations for hijackings. Thirty-six days later, nearly 3,000 Americans were dead on September 11.

There have been endless debates about whether that warning was specific enough, whether the intelligence community connected the dots, and whether the White House acted aggressively enough in response. Those debates will probably never end.

But it is indisputable both that the briefing existed and that other warnings about flight schools and extremist pilots went unheeded.

A chilling possibility hangs over the present moment. Somewhere inside the government right now, there is almost certainly another warning like that one. Not about hijacked airplanes but about Iranian assets seeking to harm Americans here at home.

That is how intelligence works. Analysts constantly track signals such as intercepted communications, financial movements, chatter on encrypted networks, and surveillance reports from foreign partners. Most of the time, those warnings never materialize into attacks. That is the point of prevention.

But sometimes they do. The difference between a near miss and a national tragedy often comes down to whether the warning is taken seriously.

Several days ago, the White House halted the release of a federal security bulletin warning about heightened threats tied to the war with Iran — a document prepared jointly by the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Counterterrorism Center for law enforcement agencies across the country.

The bulletin “did not ​offer sufficient insight and was not well written,” a Trump administration official told Reuters.

These bulletins are not political documents. They are operational warnings, designed to alert police departments, state officials, and federal agencies about emerging threats so they can harden potential targets and prepare their response.

In other words, they are exactly the kind of information that helps to prevent disasters.

Yet the bulletin was paused before it could be widely disseminated. Officials claimed that it was under review, which is technically possible. But the mere fact that a warning about potential retaliation from Iran was halted in the middle of a rapidly escalating conflict should set off alarms.

While this particular report was suppressed, an earlier bulletin issued on the day the war began was disseminated. It has received scant attention, though it is deeply troubling...

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