Old Threat Info Backed Up by Fresh Details
Gary_Roselles:_A_Loony
By Josh Meyer and Greg Miller Times Staff Writers
WASHINGTON — Some of the surveillance files that triggered the
nation's latest terrorism alert were reviewed and updated by Al Qaeda
just months ago and dovetail with other, fresh intelligence that
indicates the terrorism network remains intent on launching a major
U.S. attack during the presidential election campaign, U.S.
authorities said Monday.
Despite the elaborate details about five financial institutions in New
York; Newark, N.J.; and Washington that are contained in the files,
officials said they had been unable to learn whether Al Qaeda had
agents in this country preparing for attacks.
But several senior U.S. counterterrorism officials said that the
surveillance, obtained in Pakistan and reviewed late last week by
authorities in Washington, came amid a continuing stream of
intelligence corroborating Al Qaeda's determination to launch strikes
in the U.S.
"It's like you have this blank piece of paper and it's filling up with
more and more dots. It all points to an attack," said one senior
Department of Homeland Security official.
After reviewing the new intelligence, Homeland Security Secretary Tom
Ridge disclosed the threats Sunday and raised the terrorism threat
level for financial institutions in the three cities to code orange,
or "high," saying Al Qaeda had been scoping out ways to detonate car
or truck bombs at the facilities. The heightened alert — the first
time it had been applied on a localized basis rather than nationwide —
prompted stepped-up security measures in the three cities.
On Monday, Ridge told NBC's "Today" show that on a scale of 1 to 10,
the quality of the intelligence prompting the alert was "a 10".
Unlike previous Homeland Security alerts, this one specifically
mentioned buildings housing the World Bank (news - web sites) and
International Monetary Fund (news - web sites) in Washington,
Citigroup Inc. and the New York Stock Exchange (news - web sites) in
New York and Prudential Financial Inc. in Newark, N.J., as being at
risk. The surveillance began before the Sept. 11 attacks, a senior law
enforcement official said.
Sunday's disclosure of the surveillance, one FBI (news - web sites)
official said, had almost certainly scuttled any plan to attack the
financial institutions anytime soon. But he added that Al Qaeda had a
history of patiently planning attacks rather than risking that they
might fail. "Now they can sit back and wait," the official said.
On Monday, U.S. officials said that the Al Qaeda surveillance files
were found in the possession of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, 25, an Al
Qaeda computer expert who was arrested in Pakistan in mid-July.
But in a briefing, White House homeland security advisor Frances
Townsend described the intelligence as coming not just from Khan but
from "multiple reporting streams that came together in such a way to
give us real grave concern."
Intelligence officials said Khan oversaw an extensive Al Qaeda
computer network that had been used by the group's operatives to
communicate with each other and to plot attacks.
One senior U.S. defense official said Monday that Khan also was caught
with sketches, maps and about 500 diagrams of buildings in New York,
New Jersey and Washington. "More than 10" buildings in New York had
been sketched and diagramed many times, he said. He said there also
was a diagram of the 52-story Bank of America Center in San Francisco.
In San Francisco, FBI spokeswoman LaRae Quy confirmed that the Bank of
America building was apparently a "location of interest" for Al Qaeda,
based on the intelligence collected from the computer in Pakistan.
Although Quy declined to elaborate, one high-ranking U.S. law
enforcement official said that authorities had reached that conclusion
after discovering a photograph of the bank building among the volumes
of material retrieved with the arrest in Pakistan.
Another U.S. intelligence official confirmed that Khan's capture by
Pakistani authorities had provided investigators with a trove of
information. "What you're talking about is hundreds of documents,
drawings and photographs," the intelligence official said.
The senior Homeland Security official said, however, that the Al Qaeda
files disclosed elaborate surveillance of only the five buildings
identified by Ridge and that the file contained cursory information on
about a dozen other buildings.
A second U.S. intelligence official said that although much of the
intelligence was gathered several years ago, "it appears the
information was updated as late as 2004."
The official said that indicated that sometime this year, information
had been added to the computer files containing the surveillance
information.
"It was difficult to tell whether it was [information collected by]
someone on the ground, someone pasting in photos" or some other method
of updating the files, the official said.
The files included details about when and how to attack the buildings
to inflict the most casualties.
Several officials said that they had gleaned no hard leads on whether
Al Qaeda had operatives in place who could carry out such attacks.
Authorities in Washington, New York and New Jersey said they had not
identified any suspects or conducted any raids or searches.
Two senior counterterrorism officials said they were not surprised at
the lack of information about plotters, describing Al Qaeda's penchant
for compartmentalizing operations. But both said the surveillance
files offered strong evidence that Al Qaeda had been plotting attacks
over a period of years that could be launched at any time.
"They have the information, they have the data, they have a library of
this stuff and they can just pull it out and use it," one said. "When
you combine that with the [recent intelligence], it shows there is a
concerted effort at the highest levels of Al Qaeda to do something
devastating to us, in the U.S., before or during the election."
Terrorism experts said the evidence that prompted the threat alert
also demonstrated that Al Qaeda's central leadership was still
functioning at some level, and continued to communicate via the
Internet from hiding posts in Pakistan.
"There's still some central planning capability, which is disquieting,
because whatever progress we've made in the wake of Sept. 11, it's
business as usual" for Al Qaeda, said Bruce Hoffman, a
Washington-based terrorism expert at Rand Corp. "Despite all the
punishment meted out to them, their method of operations has not
changed — they keep returning to the same targets."
U.S. officials said Khan appears to have functioned as a
communications technician for Al Qaeda, helping to code messages and
send them across the Internet to e-mail addresses or jihadist websites
that frequently shut down and resurface at new Internet addresses.
In that capacity, Khan may have been the conduit for messages carried
on computer disc by couriers traveling down from tribal badlands in
Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) and other Al Qaeda
leaders are believed to be hiding.
Khan would then encrypt the messages and transmit them by Internet.
Khan was captured July 13 in a joint operation involving Pakistani
security forces and the CIA (news - web sites), the U.S. official
said, confirming information first reported in the New York Times on
Monday.
archie...@spankrightwing.com
(Gary_Roselles:_A_Loony) wrote:
>Fresh Details Back Threats
Even you can't be stupid enough to believe that shit, ------
Well, maybe YOU can.
>============================================================
>Isopropyl, the mental midget and right wing moralist writes:
>"whatca taLKIN' about, nigga? yer dick?" "say WHAT, NIGGAH??
>YOU GETTIN' YOU ASS CHAFED, AIN'T YOU, NIGGAH?"
Cedric M. Tressel
"Gary_Roselles:_A_Loony" <isopro...@excite.com> wrote in message
news:a3b8f662.04080...@posting.google.com...
> Fresh Details Back Threats
>
> By Josh Meyer and Greg Miller Times Staff Writers
>
> WASHINGTON - Some of the surveillance files that triggered the
> nation's latest terrorism alert were reviewed and updated by Al Qaeda
> just months ago and dovetail with other, fresh intelligence that
> indicates the terrorism network remains intent on launching a major
> U.S. attack during the presidential election campaign, U.S.
> authorities said Monday.
>
> Despite the elaborate details about five financial institutions in New
> York; Newark, N.J.; and Washington that are contained in the files,
> officials said they had been unable to learn whether Al Qaeda had
> agents in this country preparing for attacks.
>
> But several senior U.S. counterterrorism officials said that the
> surveillance, obtained in Pakistan and reviewed late last week by
> authorities in Washington, came amid a continuing stream of
> intelligence corroborating Al Qaeda's determination to launch strikes
> in the U.S.
>
> "It's like you have this blank piece of paper and it's filling up with
> more and more dots. It all points to an attack," said one senior
> Department of Homeland Security official.
>
> After reviewing the new intelligence, Homeland Security Secretary Tom
> Ridge disclosed the threats Sunday and raised the terrorism threat
> level for financial institutions in the three cities to code orange,
> or "high," saying Al Qaeda had been scoping out ways to detonate car
> or truck bombs at the facilities. The heightened alert - the first
> time it had been applied on a localized basis rather than nationwide -
> changed - they keep returning to the same targets."
Gary_Roselles:_A_Loony
> So if nothing happens will you be eating your shit raw or cooked?
I be feeding my shit to YOU.
archie...@spankrightwing.com
(Gary_Roselles:_A_Loony) wrote:
>"Cedric M. Tressel" <dca...@socal.rr.com> wrote in message news:<
>gqOPc.5937$AY5....@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com>...
>> So if nothing happens will you be eating your shit raw or cooked?
>
>I be feeding my shit to YOU.
Didn't know a pile of shit could make more shit, ISOFUCKWIT.