Last week, as detailed both on Newsbusters early Friday and in last Friday's CyberAlert, Olbermann made the claim that "we've cobbled together in the last couple of hours a list of at least 13 occasions that, on which, whenever there has been news that significantly impacted the White House negatively, there has been some sudden credible terror threat somewhere in this country," and then wondered, "How could the coincidence be so consistent?" Even though Olbermann himself acknowledged that it was New York City authorities who chose to enact the terror alert while the White House downplayed its necessity, he still theorized that this could have been orchestrated to distract attention away from the announcement of Karl Rove's upcoming grand jury testimony in the Valerie Plame CIA leak case.
On Monday night, the Countdown host touched on the same theme again before later plugging the upcoming special report for Wednesday. After an interview with Washington Post reporter Jim Vandehei about the latest on the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation, Olbermann said the following:
Keith Olbermann: "And then there is the intersection, or at least the juxtaposition, between politics and terror. We noted it here last week when, after a speech by the President about the war on terror and after the word that the special prosecutor would not guarantee to Karl Rove that he would not indict him, New York City suddenly announced there was credible, specific intelligence about a terror threat to its subway system. National intelligence agencies quickly dismissed the credibility of the information and revealed that New York's officials had known about it for about four days, but had, for some reason, chosen that moment to make it public. Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent the next four days publicly defending the announcement and the subsequent ramped-up police presence. Well, today, it was all ramped down. As our correspondent Pete Williams reports, this morning, Mayor Bloomberg declared that the threat period 'now seems to be passing.' Thus, so too will the extra security."
After a report by Pete Williams, Olbermann continued with this preview of Wednesday night's show:
Olbermann: "Last Thursday, we spoke of at least 13 coincidences of timing between bad political news for the government and a terror or terror-related event. We will be presenting a special report detailing those and other coincidences on Wednesday night's edition of this news hour, 'The Nexus of Politics and Terror' on Countdown this Wednesday at 8 and midnight Eastern here on MSNBC."
And on Tuesday night's show, Olbermann plugged the Wednesday show again with the following:
Olbermann: "Touching on the New York mistake from last week, a reminder that tomorrow night during Countdown, we'll be bringing you a special report, 'The Nexus of Politics and Terror,' those occasions in the last three and a half years when bad news for the administration has been followed by a terror warning or other terror event. Tomorrow night on Countdown at 8 p.m. and midnight Eastern."
