If There Were A Connection, Would Times Report It?

Newly developed intelligence places a senior Iraqi intelligence agent near the heart of the September 11 attacks.

A senior officer in Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's security services was a member of the terrorist group that committed the September 11 attacks, a member of the commission investigating the suicide hijackings said yesterday.
"There is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaeda," said September 11 commission member and former Navy Secretary John Lehman.


Well, yes. The Times would mention it, but just barely, near the end of an article and only after setting it up as a political, not an intelligence issue.

Another Republican member of the commission, John Lehman, said Sunday that new information — not yet confirmed — suggested that a lieutenant colonel in Mr. Hussein's Fedayeen fighter force was a "very prominent member" of Al Qaeda.

"We are now in the process of getting this latest intelligence," he said in an interview on the NBC News program "Meet the Press."