The Lake Effect :: New York Sun Editorial

Those who want to comprehend the import of the new National Intelligence Estimate on the terrorist threat have two choices. They can look at the dispatch by our Eli Lake on page one of yesterday's Sun, which reported its conclusion that one of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran. Or they can go with the version being retailed by the official briefer of the press, Ted Gistaro, who, when asked about Mr. Lake's report yesterday, went out of his way to mumble something about how he didn't know anything about it.

Our advice is go with Mr. Lake. One of the hottest potatoes in the intelligence community right now is the gathering evidence that not only is Iran operating against us in Iraq but that leaders of Al Qaeda are operating against us from inside Iran. This is not information anyone is eager to put his or her name to, lest they get accused of ginning up support for a war. We'll leave it to those in a higher pay grade to decide whether there ought to be a war. But Mr. Lake's assignment is to cut to the facts, and the fact is that our intelligence community has concluded that Al Qaeda leaders are operating inside Iran.

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