The information was useless. We already had intel that something big was being planned, but we had no idea what it was. If this data had been translated 15 seconds after interception and a copy was handed to every single agent in the CIA, FBI and NSA, they wouldn't have been able to stop 9/11. It's irrelevant, except for liberals trying to hurt the Bush Administration.
Why are we hearing about it at all???
It must have been leaked from Demorats in Congress.
We have no business knowing what the NSA's sources and methods are.
There was a special on one of the major channels a month or so after 9-11 and they interviewed the head of the NSA agency that intercepts these messages. They have a budget that is very, very small and millions and millons of conversations from all over the world to soft through.
The staff is very small is mostly computerized. The computers look for certain keywords like "bomb" or "terrorist" etc. and then flags the tape to be reviewed by a human. The agency has to send may taped conversations to the CIA or National Language Agency or whoever most of the time because their agants don't speak the language.
I hope the got about a 10 Billion Dollar boost in the next budget?
What difference would it make? If you'd heard about it on Sept. 13 would it make the 3000+ killed on 9-11 any less dead? NO! I'm sick to death of this perfect 20/20 hindsight everyone is bragging about. We didn't see 9-11 coming, plain and simple. Let's stop tearing the CIA and FBI apart for a while and let them get their acts together so they can continue preventing terrorist attacks. Have you noticed that the omnipotent Osama and his henchmen haven't been able to pull anything else off. I'm not saying that they won't in the future, but I'm sure they've had several attempts quashed by the good guys.
The date on the report is June 19, 2002.