More on the disrupted LA Library Tower terror plot

Critics of EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques) like Andrew Sullivan and Slate’s Tim Noah are spreading false and/or incomplete information about the fact that the waterboarding of KSM led to the disruption of the LA Library Tower terror plot. They point to information suggesting that the plot was broken up before KSM was in US custody.

They’re right. Sort of.

In actuality, there were two plots against the LA Library Tower – it was the second one that was broken up thanks to KSM’s singing after he was waterboarded. The LA Times reported this in October 2005, but former Bush admin official Marc Thiessen, who worked in various capacities for Bush – including speechwriting – has been a pit bull on the issue, writing several times at the National Review Online site to debunk the critics who are saying that EITs “don’t work.” He also wrote a piece that appeared in the Washington Post a week ago talking about how EITs were essential in stopping the second plot against LA. Thiessen’s got even more details on the disrupted “Second Wave” plot here.

Via Patterico, who notes in this post how the Washington Post gets the facts of the Library Tower terror plot story wrong, and in this one on how the LAT fell down on the job, too.

Once again, we see citizen journalists and mainstream conservative websites like NRO doing the job that the mainstream media, in full-blown “Cover for Obama” mode, refuses to do.

Spread the word. Email this post and others you see on this issue to people. Let them know what the mainstream media – and left wing opinion writers (same thing?) – won’t tell them.

Jim Treacher says:

April 27, 2009 at 11:22 am

If there’s one thing we know about these guys, it’s that they give up easily. Like the way they threw in the towel (no offense) after the ’93 WTC bombing.

Don’t worry, America: Tim Noah will keep you safe.

brucestrav says:

April 27, 2009 at 11:27 am

We could always go back to the ‘good old days’ of the 90s when we lost two embassies, a battleship, the WTC parking garage, 12 marines in Somalia and who knows what else. At least those were only ‘criminal acts’ and not terrorism.

It’s much easier to whistle ‘criminal act’ past the graveyard. Just flows past the lips soooo much easier. $:-\$ “

Anthony (Los Angeles) says:

April 27, 2009 at 6:57 pm

I just love these clowns. They’re in full hands-to-the-ears-screaming-ICANTHEARYOU mode to shout down any evidence that waterboarding worked. I wonder if Sullivan would be so self-righteous if it had been his city in the bullseye.

Jackass.

Carlos says:

April 27, 2009 at 7:51 pm

As with any of the anointeds’ attitudes, this one has no basis in fact. First, they have redefined “torture” to fit their own worldview (hate America view). Next, their willing idiot wannabee intellectuals (i.e., the common folk out here dumb enough not to question what they’re being fed by the media) eat up the “hate America first” campaign. Then, all they have to do is yell it loud enough, often enough that it becomes “the Truth.”

And for them, the fact that American (and undoubtedly Iraqi) lives were saved by harsh-but-not-torture means has nothing to do with the outcome. Automatically, if it did some good for our side it must have been evil, bad, illegal or all three.