U.S. forces put on alert in Mideast - June 2001 Actions -- Stop the Smear Campaign

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WASHINGTON - A Marine Corps mission in Jordan was abruptly halted Friday and Navy ships were hustled out of a Persian Gulf port in Bahrain after a threat against Americans was received, military officials said.

At the same time, the State Department was preparing to update a worldwide caution to Americans of security concerns abroad, a spokesman said.

The threat was linked to terrorist groups affiliated with Osama bin Laden, the notorious Saudi exile who has orchestrated attacks on Americans throughout the region, said U.S. officials who asked not to be identified.

The hurried precautions came one day after 13 Saudis and one Lebanese were indicted in the bombing of an Air Force housing facility in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19 Americans in 1996. A series of deadly terrorist attacks against Americans, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in October, which killed 17 sailors, has stretched the nerves of American officials in the region.

Since the attack on the Cole, U.S. forces in the Middle East have been placed on a high alert status a number of times, officials said. But it was deemed unusual by military experts to have training missions curtailed and Navy ships ordered out of port.

The Navy ordered about a half-dozen of its ships from the U.S. 5th Fleet to weigh anchor and head to open waters, a Navy official said Friday.

About 18 ships from the 5th Fleet are based in Bahrain, but most were already at sea.

On the other side of the Middle East in Jordan, 2,200 Marines training as an amphibious battle group were ordered to cut short their exercise and go back aboard ships in the Red Sea, a military official said.

Also Friday, the State Department updated its warning to Americans to be on "heightened security awareness" when traveling overseas, said Chuck Hunter, a department spokesman.

That update came in response to the Justice Department's announcement of an indictment Thursday against those alleged to have bombed the Khobar Towers housing facility in Saudi Arabia, and to other evidence of increased danger on which Hunter refused to elaborate.

"It is our judgment that we need to update this caution at this time," Hunter said. "There is no geographic specificity to it; it is worldwide."

The military reaction Friday was to what one official called "credible reports" that U.S. military personnel were in imminent danger of an attack.

Information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies on the sprawling terrorist network linked to bin Laden prompted the move, an official said.

While intelligence experts had not identified the intended target, they had been able to outline what one official called a "complex, detailed" plan to attack Americans.

In late May, U.S. forces were ordered to a high state of alert, and FBI agents and Navy investigators in Yemen looking for evidence in the Cole bombing were transferred from the port of Aden, where the attack occurred, to the capital of San'a.

A recent series of developments in cases involving attacks on U.S. military personnel and government officials has raised tensions between the United States and Islamic terrorist groups.

On May 30, a federal jury in New York convicted four associates of bin Laden of the August 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that left 224 dead, including 12 Americans.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press in Kuwait reported that bin Laden's Afghanistan-based group was boasting in a recruitment videotape that the terrorists had bombed the Cole. That was seen as the strongest evidence yet linking bin Laden to that attack.

And Thursday, just days before the fifth anniversary of the Khobar Towers bombing, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., issued a detailed indictment describing how prosecutors said Saudi members of the militant Hezbollah Islamic group and a Lebanese associate planned and executed that bombing.

That indictment said Iranian government officials aided those charged in the bombing, though no Iranian was named.

Those allegations were denied by officials in Tehran.

"The U.S. judiciary has leveled charges against Iran which have no legal and judicial basis," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi told the Islamic Republic News Agency of Iran on Friday.

But U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday, "Elements of the Iranian government inspired, supported and supervised members of Saudi Hezbollah" in planning and launching the attack on the Khobar Towers.

GRAPHIC: Photo: The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower cruises the Arabian Gulf last July. The Pentagon has put all U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region on alert after "a serious and credible" threat was received (p. 16); U.S. Navy / Getty images

This is an example of the sort of things that were being done in response to terrorist concerns.

What is happening now is a very low and reprhensible smear campaign for political means.

One would think even the Democrats would not sink this low, but alas...

Information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies on the sprawling terrorist network linked to bin Laden prompted the move, an official said.

While intelligence experts had not identified the intended target, they had been able to outline what one official called a "complex, detailed" plan to attack Americans.

Good find!

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