I believe that Peter
Lance’s new book, TRIPLE CROSS, is a flawed and inaccurate piece of
investigative reporting. Not the kind of
work one would expect from a five time Emmy award winning reporter. I write this not out of animus towards Peter
Lance. I reached this conclusion based on
evidence I have that flatly contradicts several of Lance’s claims. Let’s start with a minor issue. Peter Lance presents inaccurate and
misleading information about me on page 384 of his book.  Lance writes: 

He [Johnson] then compounded that mistaken assessment five
weeks later with a Times Op-Ed piece entitled “The Declining Terrorist Threat,”
describing al Qaeda as a “a loose amalgam of people with a shared ideology, but
a very limited direction.”[vi]
 

Peter is flat out wrong. At no point in that July 2001 op-ed did I
write what he says I wrote (here is the link to the op-ed, read it for
yourself). At no point did I refer to
Al Qaeda in that piece because I was focused on the broader trends in terrorism.