U.S. Warns of Threat to Financial Icons
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| Mon, 08-02-2004 - 9:06am |
Federal authorities warned of potential al-Qaida bombing attacks on prominent financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark, N.J., prompting increased security and concern from the unusually detailed information unearthed on the plot.
"The quality of this intelligence based on multiple reporting streams, in multiple locations is rarely seen, and it is alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said at a hastily arranged news conference Sunday.
A cache of recently obtained information including photos, drawings and written documents indicates that al-Qaida operatives have undertaken a meticulous preparations to case five specific buildings: 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.
Ridge raised the terror threat level for financial institutions in the three cities to orange, or high alert, the second highest level on the government's five-point spectrum. Elsewhere, he said, the alert would remain at yellow, or elevated.
"Iconic economic targets are at the heart of (the terrorists') interest," Ridge said.
The fresh intelligence did not give crucial details about when, where or how terrorists may strike, Ridge said, but government analysis indicates terrorists may prefer to use car or truck bombs or other means to physically destroy targets.
Briefing reporters in New York, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that starting Monday, trucks would be banned from the Manhattan-bound side of the Williamsburg Bridge, which connects Brooklyn and lower Manhattan. Commercial vehicles also were banned from the inbound of the Holland Tunnel from New Jersey, among other measures.
In Newark, police set up metal fences surrounding the Prudential Plaza building, blocked off two city streets and toted assault rifles.
And in Washington, Mayor Anthony Williams put the entire city on an orange alert, although the Homeland Security Department has not officially raised the threat level outside financial-sector buildings. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said teams of bomb-sniffing dogs would sweep areas around the World Bank and IMF headquarters, and officers will conduct more traffic stops of large vehicles in the area.
More..............
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20040802_74.html


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Op-ed: Wake up and smell the paranoia.
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=758&id=881702004
Though inspired by the terrorist threat (what terrorist threat remains unspecified), the pamphlet aspires to be useful in any emergency - which presumably explains its reliance on such all-round staples as learning CPR, stockpiling canned goods and bottled water and locating a Swiss Army knife. Shouldn’t you also buy duct tape in quantities so vast that once you’ve wrestled your terrorist to the ground you can proceed to mummify him?
Like the American campaign this public information effort is based on, Blunkett’s overall message is that in the face of terror we should go home, stay home and turn on the TV. Arguably, for some people such behaviour is little different from the norm, for we live in a society that is so paralysed by fear that it can barely leave the screens responsible for its proliferation long enough to see that, actually, it’s not that bad outside in the real world.
That said, it’s hardly surprising that people can barely see the wood for the trees when every day we are under steady bombardment from media and marketing companies, with myriad vested interests beyond the purview of mere mortals, advising us to forsake our holidays abroad because of the threat of West Nile Virus or Sars, to drive our children everywhere lest escaped mental patients attack them, and to refrain from sex because we might catch an STD (they’re on the up, you see). We can’t even go to hospital these days without fretting about whether a nasty superbug will do us in, making whatever illness we checked in with of secondary concern.
Sensation sells. That much we all know. But sensation also cripples our ability to adequately judge risks and prevents us from making informed choices about how to behave.
In the few days between the appearance of Blunkett’s bunker-crazed emergency scenario and my writing this column, I read a story about Wandsworth Council waging a war on nature because of concerns that untamed urban foliage might provide cover for rapists and muggers and that low branches might obscure the vision of CCTVs. As a result, the council is pruning everything in sight on the formerly heath-like Wandsworth Common, from trees and shrubs to brambles and nettles. It’s simply absurd.
I also read that P&O is providing information leaflets for its ferry passengers warning them of the dangers of catching novovirus - a little critter that can be picked up if you fail to wash your hands after peeing, and that produces anything from fevers to mild shakes in those it infects. I could understand P&O’s alarm if the virus laid you out in a coma for days on end, but is a mild fever really worth getting so worked up over?
In both these cases, the authorities involved are clearly paranoid about legal action: the annual cost of claims to councils alone runs into hundreds of millions of pounds. And lord only knows what P&O has to fork out each year on account of novovirus (perhaps it should divert said money towards maintaining cleaner loos). But the message that goes out to the general public remains the same: go home, stay home and watch TV.
Swaddling ourselves in paranoia is one thing, but we’re now passing it onto our children as well. Consumed with fears that they’ll be abducted by paedophiles, stabbed by one of their peers, or run over by a bus, we’ve taken to driving them everywhere, thereby preventing them from acquiring basic survival skills - everything from practical knowledge of road safety to the kind of self-confidence that comes from surviving a playground skirmish.
I can personally vouch for the fact that there’s no limit to how young such coddling can begin. When my husband and I decided to let our daughter learn to negotiate the stairs in our house, as opposed to ensuring her safety by gating them off, we met with universal glares of reproach that only those breaking the law should have to tolerate. Which brings me to my point: you cannot legislate for the kind of safety we’ve come to demand.
As to why we’re so vulnerable to the current fear pandemic is anybody’s guess, but I’ll warrant that the usual suspect behind modern urban malaise - the breakdown of the fabric of traditional communities - has something to do with it.
Granted, this old chestnut is usually the preserve of fusty back-to-basics traditionalists, but it’s high time the rest of us took the argument seriously, because in urban societies as atomised and impersonal as ours, where families are dispersed far and wide and where, as Julie Burchill once said, we have Friends instead of friends and Neighbours instead of neighbours, it is difficult to know who to trust.
If you think the correct answer is to trust no one, you’re wrong. Personally, I’d like to see a lot more resistance to all-purpose, self-raising fear - the kind that rises in the gullet at the least provocation.
Live a little, for goodness sake. Relax, head out, acquire a bit of nous. Because it would be a sad day indeed were Britain, like America post 9/11, to begin exploiting widespread fear as grounds for curtailing our civil liberties.
Last year my husband had to visit the American embassy in London to obtain a passport for our daughter and was aghast to see an anti-terror poster on the wall, which depicted a somewhat shifty, vaguely Middle Eastern-looking man, and which read: He lives among you, shops at the same shops, sends his children to your children’s schools (I paraphrase, but you get the picture)... and all along he’s been plotting to kill you.
Never mind that the poster was exhorting all who saw it to shop any neighbour with dark-skin and hooded eyelids to the police. It was simultaneously assuaging any latent concerns among Americans that their government’s policy of detaining terror suspects without charge was fundamentally unjust.
Now I know that the slope of sacrificing individual freedom for the good of the community can only be so slippery. But I can’t help being reminded how when in Baghdad earlier this year I often heard people wax nostalgic about the sense of security that existed before the Americans imposed regime change. "But the streets were clean under Saddam," they would say.
Chuckle not. This is how you start thinking when your reasoning faculties have been blunted by fear.
More detailed info. on where the treats are from.
UK terror attack plan 'in suspect's e-mails'
Plot against Britain and US discovered after computer seized
http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=886652004
The plans were found by intelligence agents in e-mails on the computer of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian arrested on July 25 after a 12-hour gun battle in the Pakistani city of Gujrat.
Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said authorities had also arrested another unnamed top al-Qaida suspect believed to be a computer and communications expert in a separate raid.
"We got a few e-mails from Ghailani’s computer about attacks in the US and UK," he added.
The minister would not confirm whether the information is what prompted US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to issue a warning yesterday about a possible al-Qaida attack on "iconic" financial institutions in New York, Washington and Newark, New Jersey.
Intelligence over the weekend is said to have pointed to a car or truck bomb. Mr Ridge specifically thanked Pakistan for its help in the war on terror during his press conference yesterday.
An intelligence official also confirmed the arrest of a computer engineer who would send messages using code words to al-Qaida suspects.
Meanwhile, Home Office officials today confirmed they were monitoring the "real and serious" threat of terrorism in Britain following Mr Ridge’s warning.
A Home Office spokesman said: "The threat remains real and serious. If a specific threat arises we would inform the public."
US officials identified the Citicorp building and the New York Stock Exchange, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank buildings in Washington, and the Prudential building in Newark as potential targets.
"The quality of this intelligence - based on multiple reporting streams, in multiple locations - is rarely seen, and it is alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information," Mr Ridge said.
Recently obtained information - including photos, drawings and written documents - indicates al-Qaida operatives have undertaken meticulous preparations aimed at the five specific buildings. Mr Ridge said the US government’s colour-coded threat level for financial institutions in just these three cities would be raised to orange - or high alert.
A senior intelligence official described "excruciating detail" and meticulous planning "indicative of al-Qaida".
The official said the intelligence indicated operatives had been examining security in and around these buildings; the best places for reconnaissance; how to make contact with employees who work in the buildings; the construction of the buildings; traffic patterns; locations of hospitals and police departments and which days of the week featured less security.
Mr Ridge said the unprecedented step of naming particular buildings was taken because of the specificity of the intelligence.
Police set up metal fences surrounding the headquarters of Prudential Financial, blocked off two streets and armed themselves with assault rifles after the warning. In New York, officials closed one of the major tunnels to commercial traffic headed into the city, and banned trucks from a bridge leading to lower Manhattan.
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said the intelligence was "very new, coming in during the last 72 hours".
Meanwhile, The FBI issued a threat advisory to law enforcement officials in the city and warned supervisors at high-profile buildings to consider posting additional security at heating, ventilation and air conditioning rooms.
• Militants have shot dead a Turkish hostage kidnapped in Iraq, according to a video posted on the internet today.
The footage shows a man identified as a Turk kneeling in front of three armed men. After reading a statement in Turkish, identifying himself and his employer, the leader of the three presumed kidnappers shoots the man in the side of the head.
The intelligence about the new threats are extremely specific, and come from more than one source. This is the real thing. It is scary. But I guess it's the wake up call we need. Too many people seem to think there is nothing to worry about and nothing to fear. I think some who are Democrats are too blinded by their dislike of President Bush to realize the danger we are in. Sad to say, it might take a major catastrophe to wake people up.
If I worked in those buildings, I'm not sure what I would do either. I guess since I'm a mother of young children I would avoid going there, at least during peak hours. Maybe I would go in at 8pm instead of 8am. I can't stand the thought of leaving my kids without a mother. No job is worth that.
If he announces this kind of information he is doing it for political gain or crying wolf.
If he thwarts an attack and announces it he is doing so for political gain.
If he thwarts an attack and can't announce it for security reasons, he is being secretive or can't show that his administration is being effective.
If an attack succeeds, he if failing.
What a miserable situation when your political enemies can't pull themselves out of the muck of hatred that they are wallowing long enough to put aside their differences and protect the country.
Pitiful...
Ah, this is the high value target produced by US pressure on Pakistan. I am not impressed. However, it was enough to erase any boost Kerry got from the demo convention. What do they call it when your enticed to defend a bogus site? As with all previous alerts, I would be be cautious with a good jolt of cynicism.
We don't, but we just can't ignore it. I suggest a mental readjustment, e.g., we face potential death every day when we drive our cars, cross the street, or take part in sports. Do we become frightened, no, we understand the risk and adjust our behavior accordingly. How long can we cower in our houses before we say--ENOUGH!
Thanks for sharing your common sense. I think of England during WWII when they were under threat of bombings, but went about the business of daily life--taking precautions when necessary. The US has been safe for so long, we have become a nation of whimps. Then I remember how how many die of attacks in our cities, but we don't crawl into holes and shiver in fear. What's the difference?
Hi Bronxgrl!
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