Aug 3 2004
Headlines in newspapers across the country on Sunday and Monday that financial institutions in New York, Washington DC, and New Jersey were being scoped out by terrorists and were targets for car or truck bombs. Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge cited "new and unusually specific information" that was judged a 10 on a 1-to-10 scale of reliability. Even on Tuesday, morning newspapers on the east coast were reporting the threat -- many (most?) without the caveat that much of the information found in Pakistan dates from 2000 and 2001. Foreign press was not so uncritical.
For example, according to World Bank spokesman Dana Milverton, the information was out of date -- it dated from 2001 -- and "a lot of it was actually public information that anyone from outside the building could have gotten."
The two suspected terrorists who were the fount of this information were arrested in Pakistan on 13 July. Much of the data was found on a laptop and showed detailed, although dated, surveillance of several financial institutions.
In its rush to share information with the press over the weekend, no one in the Administration noted that most of the intel pre-dated the September 11, 2001 attack and, apparently, no one in the media thought to ask. Assumption: releasing info over the weekend -- ratcheting the New York alert status -- must be based on current intelligence, right?
According to an unnamed official quoted in the Washington Post: "There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new... Why did we go to this level? ... I still don't know that." Another noted: "I think there was a feeling that we should err on the side of caution even if it's not clear that anything is new." The New York Times quoted an unnamed official: "What we've uncovered is a collection operation as opposed to the launching of an attack."
Ridge defended the decision to release the information over the weekend: "We have made it much more difficult for the terrorists to achieve their broad objectives... We will not become fortress America."
However, security at Citigroup Centre in Manhattan, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington DC, and Prudential Financial's headquarters in Newark, New Jersey resembles a fortress. There are concrete and metal barricades around offices and blocking streets around the NY Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan. Bomb-sniffing dogs check people and packages. Traffic into NY backed up in tunnels and on bridges as police teams, armed with rifles and machine guns, checked vehicles. Police are also spot-checking trucks in Times Square. And in Newark, NJ, officials set up concrete barriers around the 24-story Prudential building.
The Independent wrote: "Officials said, however, the information showed al-Qa'ida operatives had been scouting the targets, seeing how to make contact with employees, as well as traffic patterns and locations of hospitals and police posts."
The fact that there has been a data collection team scoping out US financial institutions should seem obvious to anyone who has read the 9-11 Commission Report, which also explains the popularity of car bombs, which Ridge mentioned as a probable technique.
See Financial Times ; Independent ; London Guardian (1) ; London Guardian (2) ; Slate ; Washington Post