With the new revelations that President Bush had some intelligence warnings of potential Al Qaida plane hijackings I'm getting tons of emails saying I owe an apology to Rep. Cynthia McKinney for my earlier criticism of her.

No apology is in order.

I've long said there should be an investigation into how much our intelligence services had picked up about the plot, what they should have done differently, how they might have better protected the country, etc.

It doesn't surprise me at all that some embarrassing revelations are now emerging, though we should keep in mind the distinction between signals and noise in intelligence collection, and how hard they can be to distinguish from each other.

McKinney said something very different however. She accused the White House of having specific foreknowledge of the attack and intentionally failing to act so as to justify a future military build-up, from which many members of the administration would personally profit. If that were true it would be criminal, to put it mildly. But there is absolutely no evidence I have seen even remotely pointing toward its being true.

So I am quite comfortable with my earlier comments.