Reporters' Notebook

By Michael Weisskopf; Elaine Shannon; Michael Elliott

We asked three of our journalists for insights on how they go about chasing the news, from whistle-blowing memos to terror alerts to the return of al-Qaeda

--MICHAEL WEISSKOPF, our national correspondent based in Washington, was the first journalist to obtain a complete copy of the 13-page memo by FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley:

"We're in one of those moments in Washington when people and federal agencies that normally don't like to talk to reporters are suddenly banging down our doors, seeking sanctuary. Officials here are working overtime--not just at their jobs--but at protecting their reputations and that of their agencies. At times like this a good Rolodex, old-fashioned shoe leather and a little luck can go a very long way. I first heard about the Rowley memo during an interview on Thursday afternoon--two days after she wrote it. By Thursday night I had obtained portions of it and sent a version of a story about it to our website, time.com By Friday I had a copy of the whole document. That gave us all Friday and Saturday to flesh out Rowley's personal story, the FBI's reaction and discover where the story was going next: a now certain congressional investigation."

--ELAINE SHANNON, correspondent, covers the FBI. She recently co-wrote The Spy Next Door, about the FBI traitor Robert Philip Hanssen:

"I guess I cover the FBI for the same reason my 12-year-old son likes to climb mountains. It's a cold, treacherous, lonely trudge, and you spend a lot of time whacking ice, but there's something addictive about the adrenaline rush when you bag the peak and the sun comes up and nobody else is within sight. I've come to appreciate the plain talk and rock-solid values of the agents I've been lucky enough to get to know. They can keep secrets, a quality I respect, though it makes me crazy sometimes.

"Reporting this week's stories, I discovered that it's not the vague but noisy threats that keep the pros awake at night; it's the silence--the lack of hard information about where, when and how the next big attack will come. Because one thing's for certain: there will be a next time. Parsing the threat warnings--that has become a daily routine. I plod through it the way I used to follow minor political races. I call my sources, chat a bit ('What's next? Scuba-diver terrorists? You gotta be kidding me'), trade a little gossip, tell a joke or two. We try to act as if life hasn't changed. But it has. At the end of the day, I know what they mean about the silence."

--MICHAEL ELLIOTT, editor-at-large, wrote this week's story on al-Qaeda:

"I keep a picture on my wall of Kamel Daoudi, who looks like the geek who ran the computer club at his high school but who the French think was a member of a cell that was trying to blow up the American embassy in Paris. I've been writing about al-Qaeda for four years now, and I get more obsessive with each assignment. I gather the reports filed by the magazine's bureaus all over the world, spread them out in my office and spend hours reading them over and over, making links, seeing which bit of information from Washington, say, checks out with something from Indonesia. Then I often call Bruce Crumley, our ace Paris correspondent, whose knowledge of Islamic terrorist organizations is encyclopedic, and go over a few ideas with him. Bruce and I are fascinated by the phenomenon of young radicals deep in the European Islamic diaspora. It is possible to know too much. When Condoleezza Rice said that nobody had ever imagined that hijackers would fly planes into buildings, I immediately thought, 'What about the Philippine investigation of Abdul Hakim Murad?' Maybe it's time to get a life."