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2004-08-03 Home Front: WoT
Anonymous sources say much of terror alert info years old
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Posted by Dan Darling 2004-08-03 12:26:32 AM|| || Front Page|| [11127 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Much of the information that -- was three or four years old,

al-Q takes at least two years to plan for their big attacks, look at 9-11 attacks. I believe the african embassy attacks took a long time as well.
Posted by Steve  2004-08-03 8:19:57 AM||   2004-08-03 8:19:57 AM|| Front Page Top

#2  Notice anything, aside from this being a NY Times story?


Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

But the officials continued to regard the information as significant and troubling because the reconnaissance already conducted has provided Al Qaeda with the knowledge necessary to carry out attacks against the sites in Manhattan, Washington and Newark. They said Al Qaeda had often struck years after its operatives began surveillance of an intended target.

Taken together with a separate, more general stream of intelligence, which indicates that Al Qaeda intends to strike in the United States this year, possibly in New York or Washington, the officials said even the dated but highly detailed evidence of surveillance was sufficient to prompt the authorities to undertake a global effort to track down the unidentified suspects involved in the surveillance operations.

"You could say that the bulk of this information is old, but we know that Al Qaeda collects, collects, collects until they’re comfortable,’’ said one senior government official. "Only then do they carry out an operation. And there are signs that some of this may have been updated or may be more recent.’’

Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said on Monday in an interview on PBS that surveillance reports, apparently collected by Qaeda operatives had been "gathered in 2000 and 2001.’’ But she added that information may have been updated as recently as January.

The comments of government officials on Monday seemed softer in tone than the warning issued the day before. On Sunday, officials were circumspect in discussing when the surveillance of the financial institutions had occurred, and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge cited the quantity of intelligence from "multiple reporting streams’’ that he said was "alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information.’’

The officials said on Monday that they were still analyzing computer records, photos, drawings and other documents, seized last month in Pakistan, which showed that Qaeda operatives had conducted extensive reconnaissance.

"What we’ve uncovered is a collection operation as opposed to the launching of an attack," a senior American official said.

Still, the official said the new trove of material, which was being sifted for fresh clues, combined with more recent flows of intelligence, had demonstrated that Al Qaeda remains active and intent on attacking the United States.

The concern about the possibility of an attack was apparent on Monday. Armed guards were positioned at the five targets listed by Mr. Ridge: the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup buildings in Manhattan, the headquarters of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington and Prudential Financial in Newark. The buildings were subjected to their highest level of security since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, with barricades, rapid-response teams and bomb-sniffing dogs providing rings of protection.

With intelligence reports specifying a possible truck bombing, police stopped and searched vehicles in the Wall Street area, while vans and trucks were banned from bridges and tunnels entering lower Manhattan.

In Washington, President Bush said the alert issued on Sunday reflected "a serious business.’’ He said at a White House news conference, "We wouldn’t be contacting authorities at the local level unless something was real.’’

A sizable part of the information seized in Pakistan described reconnaissance carried out before the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said. The documents do not indicate who wrote the detailed descriptions of security arrangements at the financial buildings or whether the surveillance was conducted for a current operation or was part of preparations for a plan that was later set aside.

In a briefing on Sunday, a senior intelligence official said that the threat to the financial institutions "probably continues even today."

Federal authorities said on Monday that they had uncovered no evidence that any of the surveillance activities described in the documents was currently under way. They said officials in New Jersey had been mistaken in saying on Sunday that some suspects had been found with blueprints and may have recently practiced "test runs’’ aimed at the Prudential building in Newark.

Joseph Billy Jr., the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Newark office, said a diagram of the Prudential building had been found in Pakistan. "It appears to be from the period around 9/11,’’ Mr. Billy said. "Now we’re trying to see whether it goes forward from there.’’

Another counterterrorism official in Washington said that it was not yet clear whether the information pointed to a current plot. "We know that Al Qaeda routinely cases targets and then puts the plans on a shelf without doing anything,’’ the official said.

The documents were found after Pakistani authorities acting on information supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency arrested Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, an engineer who was found to have served as a middleman in facilitating Qaeda communications. His capture led the C.I.A. to laptop computers, CD-ROM’s, and other storage devices that contained copies of communications describing the extensive surveillance.

Mr. Khan had been essentially unknown to the United States as recently as May, , who said the C.I.A. had described him to Pakistani authorities that month only as a shadowy figure identified by his alias, Abu Talha.

The lack of knowledge about Mr. Khan reflected how hard it has been for American authorities to penetrate Al Qaeda. He operated successfully without the government learning of his existence even after three years of an intensive intelligence war against Qaeda that has emphasized efforts to intercept the terror network’s communications traffic.

In pursuing the new leads, intelligence and law enforcement authorities were working at several different levels, American officials said, in trying to make sense of what some described as a "jigsaw puzzle" that included first names, aliases, and temporary email addresses but little hard identifying material that could lead to suspects in the United States or overseas.

The scope of the inquiry ranged from "individuals who were orchestrating it from far-off lands to individuals who were in charge of different cells, to the actual operating of cells," a senior intelligence official said. The priority effort to identify people connected to the surveillance of the financial institutions has been under way since counterterrorism officials received the new information from Pakistan beginning Thursday evening, counterterrorism officials said on Monday.

The information, which officials said was indicative of preparations for a possible truck- or car-bomb attack, left significant gaps. It did not clearly describe the suspected plot, indicate when an attack was to take place nor did it describe the identities of people involved.

As a result, federal and local authorities began an effort to locate possible suspects who might have carried out the surveillance. Intelligence officers began interviewing Qaeda detainees asking whether they knew Mr. Khan or anyone who might have been involved in monitoring the targeted buildings and allied foreign intelligence services were asked if they had any information about the suspected plot.

At the same time, federal agents and local police began canvassing the buildings regarded as likely targets seeking to determine whether anyone recalled seeing people who appeared to be conducting surveillance. They sought lists of employees to determine whether anyone suspicious might have worked at any of the buildings and names of vendors, searching for anyone who might have visited the buildings to study security arrangements.

Senior counterterrorism and intelligence officials based in Europe said the information targeting the five buildings was developed by Qaeda operatives before Sept. 11, 2001. But a senior European counterterrorism official cautioned that "some recent information’’ indicated that the buildings might remain on a list of Qaeda targets.

"Al Qaeda routinely comes up with ways to hit targets for years at a time, so it may not mean much that these buildings were first targeted more than three years ago,’’ the official said.
Posted by badanov  2004-08-03 8:36:42 AM|| [http://www.rkka.org]  2004-08-03 8:36:42 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Not a single named source, of course. It's almost as if the NYT has a policy AGAINST naming sources.
Posted by Robert Crawford  2004-08-03 9:01:22 AM|| [http://www.kloognome.com]  2004-08-03 9:01:22 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 The right to cross-examination is based upon the simple fact that anyone can say anything as long as their name is kept quiet. If there is an attack, no one wants to be the idiot who disclaimed a threat. Therefore, make political points, anonymously, and save your job at the same time. Good catch Badanov.
Second, the dates on the earliest documents only proves planning. It does not, alone, prove that the plan was discarded.
Posted by Anonymous5978 2004-08-03 9:20:20 AM||   2004-08-03 9:20:20 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 How old was the information in the August 6, 2001 President's Daily Briefing from which President Bush was supposed to divine the 9/11 attacks?
Posted by Matt 2004-08-03 10:56:56 AM||   2004-08-03 10:56:56 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 This story is a bowl of chili for the speculative, gossipy, fanciful, doutful, "intellectual", conspiracy theory prone, nervous, diaretic mind; the kinds made of putty. The kind that reads the NYT and takes it seriously. Its gone from "some say" to "officials say".
Al-quds is a command and control structure. Its a top down corporate org. with control freaks all the way down the line. As a corporate entity, the mass media probably respects that.

So why would anyone want to join it if your ground level-entry level position starts at being held hostage? With a gun or a knife held to your head?
Posted by an dalusian dog 2004-08-03 12:47:11 PM||   2004-08-03 12:47:11 PM|| Front Page Top

#7 This story is a bowl of chili for the speculative, gossipy, fanciful, doutful, "intellectual", conspiracy theory prone, nervous, diaretic mind; the kinds made of putty.

Whoa! Like that.
Posted by Shipman 2004-08-03 2:03:53 PM||   2004-08-03 2:03:53 PM|| Front Page Top

#8 Not a single named source, of course. It's almost as if the NYT has a policy AGAINST naming sources.

Well, you gotta admit, that does make their jobs a helluva lot easier. Must help a lot when Scoops Sulzberger is pushing a deadline.
Posted by tu3031 2004-08-03 2:27:10 PM||   2004-08-03 2:27:10 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Doesn't this whole thing stike anybody as just a little bit strange that all this OLD intell was finally released AFTER Kerry called W a softie on terror? Almost like maybe little G is afraid of losing his job??????
Looks like more of the vague, we are almost surely going to be under attack sometime, somewhere, from somebody song, except Ridge and the incompetent band of H/S boobs have written another (or been given )another verse to sing...
Posted by USN, retired 2004-08-03 2:40:47 PM||   2004-08-03 2:40:47 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 I appreciate your service, USN, but do you always take a disrespectful attitude to the CiC?
It's not as if the NYSlimes doesn't have an agenda here, is it?
The only papers beating this story are the Slimes and the WaPo, both of which hate President Bush and want to bring his Administration down.
I can fully believe that Al Queda would use "old" plans for an attack as Osama was either killed 3 years ago or he hasn't exactly been able to settle in one place to plan new attacks.
Posted by GreatestJeneration  2004-08-03 2:51:57 PM|| [http://www.greatestjeneration.com]  2004-08-03 2:51:57 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Jen, give it time. AQ is still rebuilding him using sticks and sand in secret underground lavatories labratories.
Posted by Anonymous5983 2004-08-03 3:19:35 PM||   2004-08-03 3:19:35 PM|| Front Page Top

#12  Doesn't this whole thing stike anybody as just a little bit strange that all this OLD intell was finally released AFTER Kerry called W a softie on terror? Almost like maybe little G is afraid of losing his job??????


What old information? It's based on NEW information, but NYT can't be bothered to find (or report, if they found) the entire story:

More financial institutions than previously disclosed may be at risk of attack, and an al-Qaida operative has told British intelligence that the group's target date is early September, intelligence sources said yesterday.

The operative, described as "credible" by British intelligence, told his debriefers that the attack would take place "60 days before the presidential election" on Nov. 2, according to a former senior National Security Council official. On Sept. 2 President George W. Bush is expected to address the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden.


Source: Terror attack to be in early September

NYT lied to us, or was lied to by their "sources", or they stopped investigating once they had the story they wanted. In any case, I do hope the fools who got taken in by the NYT will admit their mistake.
Posted by Robert Crawford  2004-08-03 3:37:14 PM|| [http://www.kloognome.com]  2004-08-03 3:37:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#13 Were the attacks in Madrid tranist system years old? ...or weeks or days old in order to alter the national elections, which they did.
Posted by Mark Espinola 2004-08-03 3:44:06 PM||   2004-08-03 3:44:06 PM|| Front Page Top

#14 Hi ya USN retired!
How about this Victory thing?
Think maybe the yids were pulling the woolsey over our (haliburton built, rothschild financed) eyes?

(nudge, nudge) Know what I mean?
Posted by Col Flagg 2004-08-03 4:10:11 PM||   2004-08-03 4:10:11 PM|| Front Page Top

#15 USN, at least some media are in agreement...
Excerpts from: U.S. defends "three-year-old" terror alert
Wed 4 August, 2004 00:41
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=558751§ion=news
By Mark Egan
***
Ridge denied there was any political motivation behind raising the terror alert when President George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry, are neck-and-neck in polls ahead of November's presidential election.

"This is not about politics. It's about confidence in government," Ridge said."
***
But former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean accused Bush of releasing the information now to dampen the rise in opinion polls, or "bounce," Kerry might have expected after his nominating convention in Boston last week.

"Isn't it unusual they might choose two days after the Democratic National Convention when John Kerry was in the middle of his bounce," Dean, who ran against Kerry for the presidential nomination, said in an interview on MSNBC's "Hardball." The alert, he said, could have been issued weeks ago.
Posted by Anonymous5607 2004-08-04 12:11:15 AM||   2004-08-04 12:11:15 AM|| Front Page Top

#16 What's your point, 5607, except that all the Dimocrats are on the same page on this?
The Bush Administration can't win with them--if they put out an alert, it's political and for their advantage, to make the Bush Administration look good.
Same thing if there's a problem or an attack and then it's "Bush knew" but didn't do anything about it, or didn't do enough, or not soon enough, etc.
I'm sick to death of the Dims crying "wolf" (partisan politics) when it's a whine to try and get the political highground and "their" power back!
Why does it never occur to you that President Bush and Ridge and the rest of the Bush Administration are just doing their jobs to defend America, as best they know how, with the best information they have and at the right time?
Because the Left is INSANE with Bush hate, that's why.
Posted by GreatestJeneration  2004-08-04 12:35:32 AM|| [http://www.greatestjeneration.com]  2004-08-04 12:35:32 AM|| Front Page Top

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