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| Home Front: WoT |
| Terror threat confirmed by 3 sources |
| 2004-08-05 |
| The Bush administration learned from a third person, separate from two prisoners identified this week, that al-Qaeda was plotting to attack American financial buildings, officials said. The information from the third person was "another new stream of intelligence" that supported the White House decision to issue a terror warning on Sunday, the officials said. The information arrived days before the public alert, as officials were reviewing reams of recently obtained documents and photographs that showed surveillance of five buildings in New York City, New Jersey and Washington carried out years earlier by al-Qaeda. "Old information isn't irrelevant information — particularly with this kind of enemy," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Wednesday in Nashville The information corroborating al-Qaeda's intentions to carry out attacks against U.S. financial buildings came from someone other than two men recently captured in Pakistan, said a senior Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity. It was unclear whether the person was a prisoner or informant. Information from the two captives — a young militant familiar with computers and a man indicted for the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in 1998 — had provided the bulk of the intelligence that led to Sunday's warnings. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |