Posted on 12/27/2003 4:44:39 PM PST by FairOpinion
WASHINGTON - Officials are girding for a possible terrorist act on New Year's Eve, replaying fears of Al Qaeda's unsuccessful millennium plot to blow up Los Angeles Airport. "We're still concerned," a senior U.S. law enforcement official said yesterday. The official cautioned that the passing of Christmas without an attack had not diminished heightened fears of terrorism on U.S. soil.
But ringing in the new year under a terror threat against large public gatherings is only one of the scenarios that have counter.terrorism agents worried.
"There's a lot of little pieces of information that we've been able to obtain, and we're in the process of analyzing that intelligence and ascertaining what it may mean," a senior law enforcement official told the Daily News.
"Some of it was associated with New Year's Day," the source added.
Other U.S. intelligence officials said that the volume of terrorist chatter overheard or intercepted yesterday had changed little since Christmas Eve.
One source said a few days ago that the volume of excited talk among extremists had declined somewhat from its peak last weekend, when the fourth Code Orange alert this year was announced by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
Yesterday, Air France resumed service to Los Angeles after six flights set to depart Christmas Eve or Christmas Day were canceled because of U.S. suspicions that terrorists could attempt an attack on a U.S. city.
The first Air France flight to L.A. was delayed for nearly three hours because of extra security checks, officials said.
Meanwhile, the latest issue of Al Qaeda's Internet magazine, The Voice of Jihad, hit the Web Thursday and included praise for a Dec. 19 audiotape by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the terror network's second in command under Osama Bin Laden.
The site claimed "America is falling [in] just a matter of time."
The message in the magazine - which came a day after Al Qaeda thug Abu Mohammed al-Ablaj E-mailed threats against the U.S. to a Saudi weekly - is worrisome because the group's attacks often follow high-profile communications, said Rita Katz, author of "Terrorist Hunter," who obtained the screed.
"It definitely indicates the latest Zawahiri tape was very important to Al Qaeda members," Katz said. "It appears they were actually waiting for messages like this."
Originally published on December 27, 2003
I've heard time and time again that BL is in Iran yet we send our taxpayers money over to help them when they get in trouble.
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