'Mr. Counter-Terrorism Guru': he says he's not, but others say he is.(THE MEDIA)

ON July 10, 2001, the New York Times published an opinion article titled "The Declining Terrorist Threat." It was written by Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and State Department counterterrorism official, who argued that Americans spent too much time worrying about terrorist attacks that would likely never come. "Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment," Johnson wrote, "Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism." And then:

 
   They seem to believe that terrorism is the 
   greatest threat to the United States and 
   that it is becoming more widespread and 
   lethal. They are likely to think that the 
   United States is the most popular target of 
   terrorists. And they almost certainly have 
   the impression that extremist Islamic 
   groups cause most terrorism. None of 
   these beliefs are based in fact. 

Surveying the security situation around the world, Johnson sought to reassure readers. "The greatest risk is clear: if you are drilling for oil in Colombia--or in nations like Ecuador, Nigeria or Indonesia--you should take appropriate precautions," he wrote. "Otherwise Americans have little to fear."

Two months later, the planes of September 11 crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. And Larry Johnson became known, at least in the eyes of some of his former colleagues, as the author of perhaps the most embarrassing op-ed ever published. "The worst," says one such colleague. "On an issue of national interest, has there ever been a worse prognostication in the history of man?"

Probably not. Yet Johnson's career as a commentator did not just continue after September 11--it thrived.

In recent years, Johnson, who says he is a registered Republican, has made a new career of using his CIA credentials to bash the Bush administration. He has become a favorite not only of the left-wing blogosphere--on his website, called No Quarter, he writes entries like "Frog-March the Bastard," which was a call for the indictment of Karl Rove--but also of the nation's biggest newspapers and cable news networks. If you're a reporter looking for a quote criticizing the president about warrantless surveillance, or about the CIA's "secret prisons," or about the troubled efforts to reform the spy agency, Johnson is your man. In just the last few months, his observations about intelligence matters have appeared in or on the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, the Sunday Times of London, the Guardian, the Associated Press, Knight-Ridder, National Public Radio, CNN, MSNBC, and more.

Why does Johnson receive such attention? Compared with some of the CIA's other critics, like Bob Baer, who spent 21 years as a case officer, or Milt Bearden, who spent 30 years at the agency and left as a high-ranking official, Johnson's credentials are a little thin. He worked there as an analyst, not as a top manager or a covert agent, for all of four years, 1985 to 1989, which means it has been 17 years since he was employed by the CIA. And his specialty wasn't the Middle East or terrorism; instead, he dealt with issues related to Central America, a subject he's rarely called on to comment about today. What experience he had with terrorism came not at the CIA but at the State Department, where he worked mostly on transportation-security issues from 1989 to 1993.