Is James Atlas really “an overwrought hysteric,”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> as I But this morning New York Times op-ed columnist “Could this happen?” Kristof asks, and answers: “Unfortunately, it could — and many experts <\/P> It isn’t until the eighth paragraph, halfway through his column, that Kristof lets us know:
\ncalled him yesterday, because of his hand-wringing essay, “The Fear This
\nTime,”<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> about life in post-9\/11 New York? Well, I still
\nthink of him as an Upper West Side weenie. <\/P>
\n
\nexploding in Times Square would “vaporize or destroy” Madison Square Garden, the Empire
\nstate Building, Grand Central Terminal and Carnegie Hall, would “partly destroy” the United
\nNations building and much of midtown Manhattan, and would kill about 500,000 people.<\/P>
\n
\nbelieve that such an attack, somewhere, is likely.” He cites a “terrifying new book” — Harvard
\nprofessor Graham Allison’s
\n— as the source of that Times Square scenario. He points out further that Allison “did not pluck it
\nfrom thin air” but rather from White House aides. Exactly one month after 9\/11, they “told
\nPresident Bush that a C.I.A. source code-named Dragonfire had reported that Al Qaeda had
\nobtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon and smuggled it into New York City.”<\/P>
\nThe C.I.A. found the report plausible. … President Bush dispatched nuclear
\nexperts to New York to search for the weapon and sent Dick Cheney and other officials out of
\ntown to ensure the continuity of government in case a weapon exploded in Washington instead.
\nBut to avoid panic, the White House told no one in New York City, not even Mayor Rudy
\nGiuliani.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
\n
\n“Dragonfire’s report was wrong.”<\/I> (The italics are mine.) Not that there haven’t been other
\n“similar reports” — as yet unconfirmed — that Al Qaeda has gotten hold of a nuclear weapon from
\nthe former Soviet Union. So maybe when Atlas writes that “living in New York is like a terminal
\ndisease” waiting for another disaster much worse than 9\/11 to happen, he’s not just<\/I>
\nan Upper West Side weenie echoing cocktail party chatter in purple prose.<\/P>
\n