NYT: Walking a "fine line on politics and terror."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/04/politics/campaign/04dems.html

SNIP..." For Howard Dean, there is now no question about why the White House raised the terror alert on Sunday.

"The administration is manipulating the release of information in order to affect the president's campaign," Dr. Dean said in an interview on Tuesday, adding that the alert was issued as Senator John Kerry began a cross-country trip celebrating his nomination. "This is a pattern that goes back to 2002 when Karl Rove wrote his well-known memo advising Republican candidates to run on terrorism."

And from a Dem consultant Axelrod, is it or isn't it...now this is real political speak. So, Mr Axelrod is that a yes or no?

SNIP..."To go out there and raise these doubts without any real evidence of contrivance would be a mistake," said David Axelrod, a consultant working for the Democratic National Committee. "It's difficult because there are serious threats out there, and if something serious actually happens, you never want to be in a position of having cast doubt on the severity of the threat."
But Mr. Axelrod added: "You can see how the timing was curious coming the day after the convention. It does create issues."

SNIP..."
But in the interview on Tuesday, Dr. Dean was, if anything, stronger in portraying the White House announcement as timed to disrupt Mr. Kerry's postconvention trip even if based on legitimate threats.

"I think telling the truth is always fair ground," Dr. Dean said. "The truth as I see it is the president has a long history of manipulating public opinion: of going into Iraq on information that turned out not to be true. Although I think the warnings are legitimate - buildings have been cased - this is a president who had access to this information three weeks ago. That's political."
There were signs Tuesday that Dr. Dean was not alone in his suspicions."

SNIP..."Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said: "Now that we're hearing that some of this data is two or three years old, it raises serious questions in my mind about whether or not they are manipulating the data to cause all this confusion."END SNIP

Overall a pretty fair article.

I was disappointed in Clinton on Letterman tonight. He had nothing to lose by speaking out on this.

So far it looks like only Jesse Jackson and Henry Waxman dare acknowledge Dean could be right.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37911-2004Aug3.html

SNIP...."The White House's failure to make it clear that the dramatic terrorism alert Sunday was based largely on information that predated the Sept. 11 attacks is a case study in the difficulty of managing such warnings for an administration whose credibility is a central issue in a difficult presidential campaign.

At one level, experts yesterday credited the Department of Homeland Security for narrowly targeting the warning to selected buildings in three cities, rather than raising the threat level across the nation. But they said the effort was seriously undercut by the revelation that much of the surveillance of those buildings took place three to four years ago."

SNIP...." Jesse L. Jackson, echoing that theme, said he was suspicious of the timing of the alert, just days after the Democratic convention. "We've been told to be on alert" before, he said yesterday, referring to Iraq and the unsuccessful search for banned weapons there. "That did not prove to be true."

SNIP..."I've always found if you are straightforward and honest with people and give them the facts, it is a lot easier for them to deal with," said James Lee Witt, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Bill Clinton and now head of a crisis consulting firm. "They should have said, 'This is the information we found, but it is old.' That is what I would have done."