The Heathrow timeline, again

It's a topic that won't go away: who knew what and when about the status of the Heathrow liquid bomb plot investigation. As we've argued before, the conventional Reid-Bush timeline doesn't hold up i.e. the claim that there was a slow-moving investigation which only became pressing on the 8th of August, necessitating a sudden move on the alleged plotters. It's already clear that Tony Blair and George Bush had discussed the plot the prior weekend, and its denouement came rather conveniently for the Republican strategy regarding Joe Lieberman's Democratic primary defeat in Connecticut.

But now via Powerline comes news that the Washington knowledge of the plot was even wider, and even earlier. The revelation was in an interview given by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to Minnesota bloggers, and in a typed version of hushed tones, "Hindrocket" explains:

Frist is deadly serious about the war on terror, the pre-eminent issue of our era. He tells a chilling story of receiving a call from President Bush a week before the recent British airline bomb plot was disrupted. The message at that time, communicated to less than a handful of top federal officials, was that a terrorist plan was known to be in progress which could kill several thousand Americans, but there was no assurance that it could be stopped. It was stopped, thankfully, and news accounts suggest that the very terrorist surveillance programs now under attack by the Democrats were instrumental in saving thousands of American lives.

Likewise, "Trunk" --

Senator Frist's comments about the foiled British Muslim plot to take down passenger planes were perhaps the most intriguing. He clearly implied what a near-run thing the foiling of the plot was.

Something's fishy. Backword has a roundup of what's now known about the plot from the semi-squelched New York Times article on Monday, from which its clear that the threat was far less imminent and out of control than Frist says. Either he's exaggerating, or there was already some notion that the plot was going to have to be shut down quite soon in the week prior to the 9th. In particular, the possibility that the decision was precipitated by a different sense of urgency on the two sides of the Atlantic remains wide open.