USS Cole Commander Predicted 9/11 Catastrophe 20 Minutes Before 3,000 Deaths

Q: What crucial intelligence did the USS Cole captain reveal to the CIA just twenty minutes before the world changed forever?

It was not a specific last-minute plot detail, but a stark warning: Kirk Lippold told CIA officials that Americans still did not grasp the scale of the al Qaeda threat and that it would likely take a “seminal event” on U.S. soil, killing hundreds or even thousands, before the country realized it was at war with Osama bin Laden. Lippold said the remark came just after he had briefed officials at CIA headquarters on intelligence connected to the USS Cole bombing, the October 2000 al Qaeda attack in Yemen that killed 17 sailors under his command. Drawing on that case and earlier attacks such as the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, he argued the United States had not responded forcefully enough to a growing terrorist danger. About 20 minutes after that exchange at Langley, the first hijacked plane struck the World Trade Center. Lippold later described the timing as chilling proof that the threat he had been warning about was real, imminent and badly underestimated. So the crucial point he revealed was this: al Qaeda’s intentions were deadly enough, and the U.S. response weak enough, that only a mass-casualty attack inside America would make the public and policymakers fully understand the war they were already in.

1 articles · Updated · Fox News · Sep 11

Kirk Lippold said he warned a senior CIA official at Langley on Sept. 11, 2001, that only a catastrophic attack on U.S. soil would make Americans grasp the threat from Osama bin Laden.
Twenty minutes later, he said, the first hijacked plane hit the North Tower, and he was leaving CIA headquarters when the second plane struck the South Tower.
Lippold had led the USS Cole less than a year earlier, when al Qaeda's Oct. 12, 2000 bombing in Aden killed 17 sailors and injured 37, shaping his view that earlier attacks went largely unanswered.
Speaking on a 25th-anniversary podcast, Lippold said the nearly 3,000 deaths on 9/11 reinforced his belief that the U.S. must confront terrorist groups and state backers more aggressively worldwide.