[Peace-discuss] the other shoe drops

[Ricky Baldwin]

OK, sports fans, for all of us who were thinking about
the convenient timing of the new terror alert, as a
July surprise just a couple days late, so to speak,
here's the evidence, hardly buried at all.  This
posted to AP just over an hour ago.  The very first
clause is the best.  Read, as they say, between the
pipelines...

Thinking of all of you from across the pond,
Ricky

Intel That Sparked Alert Dates to 2000
August 3, 2004
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER, Associated Press Writer 
WASHINGTON - U.S. officials say the detailed
surveillance photos and documents that prompted higher
terror warnings dated from as far back as 2000 and
2001, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said
Tuesday the government concluded "it was essential" to
publicize it and raise the terror alert. 
Top Bush administration officials said some of the
surveillance was apparently updated as recently as
January of this year. And they denied any allegations
that the public release of the information now, and
the raising of the terror alert, were politically
motivated. They said the information was released now
because it was just uncovered in Pakistan. 
"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland
Security," Ridge said. "Our job is to identify the
threat." 
Speaking at a news conference in New York, Ridge said
that because of the heightened security steps, "We
have made it much more difficult for the terrorists to
achieve their broad objectives. ... We will not become
fortress America." 
Officials had said earlier that it wasn't clear
whether the individuals who amassed the information,
principally on financial institutions in New York,
Newark and Washington, D.C., are still in the country
or plotting. 
The surveillance actions taken by the plotters were
"originally done between 2000 and 2001, but were
updated — some were updated — as recently as January
of this year," Fran Townsend, the White House homeland
security adviser, said Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show. 
"And from what we know of al-Qaida's method ... they
do them years in advance and then update them before
they actually launch the attack," she said. 
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that once
federal officials get such information, "they do have
a responsibility not only to evaluate it, but to get
it out." 
But some Democrats have raised concerns that the
timing of the release of the information had more to
do with politics than with fears that terrorists were
about to strike. 
Townsend and other officials noted that the
information — dating back to 2000 and 2001 — was just
recently discovered in Pakistan. "We've only gotten
the intelligence, I would say, in the last 72 hours,"
she said Tuesday. 
U.S. officials have said that the trove of hundreds of
photos, sketches and written documents that led to
Sunday's warning about new risks of terror attacks
came largely from a Pakistani computer engineer,
Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, also known as Abu Talha, who
was captured in mid-July in Pakistan. 
Officials are now following investigative leads, as
they try to learn more about possible plots against
the apparent targets: The Citigroup Center building
and the New York Stock Exchange in New York, the
International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings
in Washington and Prudential Financial Inc.'s
headquarters in Newark, N.J. 
At a news conference Monday, Townsend denied that
political considerations affected the timing of the
intelligence disclosures, which came the week after
Democrats nominated John Kerry as their presidential
candidate. "It had nothing to do with the Democratic
National Convention," she said. 
On Monday, a Pakistani intelligence official said
Khan, a computer and communications expert, had sent
messages to suspected al-Qaida members using code
words — a practice typical of the international
jihadist organization that bedeviled U.S. efforts to
unravel the Sept. 11, 2001, plot. But the Pakistani
official refused to say if Khan was part of al-Qaida. 
Khan's information has been merged with other pieces
of intelligence, including information gleaned after
Pakistan's arrest last month of a senior al-Qaida
operative named Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. 
E-mails that included plans for new attacks in Great
Britain and the United States were found on the
computer of the captured Ghailani, Pakistan's
information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, said
Monday. 
But it was Khan and the information found after his
arrest that was mostly behind the decision to raise
the government's terror alert for financial-services
buildings in New York, Washington and northern New
Jersey — to orange, or high alert. 
The FBI is analyzing the information about the
surveillance of these five buildings, obtained after
Khan's capture, to try to determine when it may have
occurred, so that investigators can review building
logs or videos during that same period, said one
senior law enforcement official, speaking only on
condition of anonymity because of the continuing
investigation. 
Investigators hope that logs or video might help
identify some of the individuals involved, which would
help agents understand the breadth of the terror plot.

The FBI is also trying to compare reports about the
surveillance with previous intelligence reports that
might have been considered innocuous or unconfirmed
months ago, but might take on important new meaning in
light of the latest information. 
Officials don't yet know precisely when the detailed
surveillance work took place. 
A counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition
of anonymity, said authorities believe the
surveillance was going on both before and after the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, based on clues within the
documents, including descriptions of security
indicative of practices used before the suicide
hijackings. 
___ 
Associated Press writer Ted Bridis contributed to this
report. 

  


		
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