Algerian plot thwarted, US media yawns

Newsmax is carrying a sensational story about a thwarted terrorist attack on America that was meant to be 'greater than 9/11'. They are asking, 'where was the US coverage?' The answer is 'practically non-exsistent', which begs the question why.

AFP originally carried the story, which was picked up by the Turkish Press:

Published: 12/23/2005
ROME - Three Algerians arrested in an anti-terrorist operation in southern Italy are suspected of being linked to a planned new series of attacks in the United States, Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said Friday.

The attacks would have targeted ships, stadiums or railway stations in a bid to outdo the September 11, 2001 strikes by Al-Qaeda in New York and Washington which killed some 2,700 people, Pisanu said.

The Algerians, suspected of belonging to a cell established by an Al-Qaeda-linked Algerian extremist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), were named as Achour Rabah, Tartaq Sami and Yasmine Bouhrama.

Note the release date of the story, December 23rd. This was only two days after this snarky piece appeared on MSNBC during the height of the NSA spy story coverage.

Newsmax believes the MSM collectively ignored the story to keep from derailing the snoopgate impeachment train, which was just getting a head of steam and heading for the mainline. They base that charge on the fact that Italian authorities were able to bust these guys using electronic surveillance. Their research showed only one major US paper carried the story.

Newsmax isn't exactly famous for their objectivity, so I decided to do my own exhaustive (well, for me) research. I came up with a US media story about Algerians being rounded up for questioned by the FBI about possible attacks on America.

In 1999.

Interesting. Let's take a trip back and see how the AP did terrorism stories in the 90s. The writer did raise a token notion of "possible civil liberties violations" as to rounding up Muslims on immigration violations to get them off the streets, and quoted the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR):

..He said he had received ``scattered reports'' of Muslim Americans complaining they were intimidated by overzealous FBI agents. ``We just hope this thing will blow over,'' Hooper said.

Nice choice of words, Mr. Hooper.

But clearly, civil rights violations were not the overriding tone of this pre-9/11, pre George Bush article. No, it was mainly about protecting America from terrorists, summed up by the city of Boston police commissioner, "The message should be clear that we're going to pursue any and all information that we can to ensure the public's safety,''