Posted on 05/21/2002 3:06:37 PM PDT by areafiftyone
The FBI warned officials in New York on Tuesday about uncorroborated information that landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty might be targeted by terrorists, a law enforcement official said.
The information, passed to the FBI's joint terrorism task force in New York, was based on interviews with detainees and was not independently confirmed, the official said.
Security was increased around monuments and landmarks after the warning was relayed to New York officials, the official said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said earlier Tuesday that the NYPD was dealing very closely with federal authorities and said the department was prepared for "any eventuality." Kelly's comments came the day before Fleet Week 2002, an annual maritime celebration expected to draw 6,000 naval personnel.
Sailors, marines and Coast Guard personnel will be aboard 22 ships, including six warships. The public is invited aboard ships participating in the festival.
Kelly said he felt the department was "doing the best that we reasonably can do to prevent another incident and to respond if, God forbid, there is one."
Security zones are in place, forbidding vessels from operating within 150 yards of the United Nations, Ellis Island or Liberty Island. Also, no vessels can operate within 25 yards of bridge piers, abutments, tunnel ventilators or waterfront facilities.
At the Brooklyn Bridge on Tuesday afternoon, police officers checked vehicles at both the Brooklyn and Manhattan entrances of the bridge, though the bridge remained open to cars and pedestrians. Around City Hall, there was also a heightened police presence.
On Tuesday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he didn't see any reason why people shouldn't enjoy Fleet Week and other activities over the weekend.
"The more people that are out the safer this city will be, and we are used to hosting big events. Fleet Week is just another one," he said. "There area always threats unfortunately, but fortunately, most are hoaxes."
The threat to New York comes as top Bush administration officials continued a chorus of warnings about potential attacks in the United States.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said terrorists are trying every way they can to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction — “whether radiological, chemical, biological or nuclear.” Briefing reporters, Powell said the anti-terrorism campaign must be waged on many fronts.
Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge said Tuesday that, while U.S. officials have no specific credible evidence of a threat of suicide bombings in the United States, Americans would be "somewhat naive" if they felt immune.
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld weighed in, telling a Senate subcommittee that terrorist groups will eventually get nuclear, chemical and biological weapons: ”They (terrorists) inevitably will get their hands on them and they will not hesitate to use them.''
Rumsfeld declined to discuss specific terrorist threats, saying the government sees hundreds a day. As many as 90 percent of them are designed simply to test the government's response.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is taking issue with a report published Tuesday that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were told about a memo from an FBI agent in Phoenix expressing concern about a large number of Arabs training at a U.S. flight school a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Citing government officials, the New York Times reported that neither official briefed President Bush about the memo until recently. Ashcroft and Mueller have not said publicly when they learned of the July 10 memorandum, the Times said.
"But the officials (interviewed) said that within days of the attacks, senior law enforcement officials grasped the document's significance as a potentially important missed signal," the report added.
On Tuesday, the State Department sent its annual report on terrorism to Congress. The report listed the same seven countries — Iran, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and Syria — as state sponsors of terrorism last year.
Iran remains the world's most active sponsor of terrorism, while Sudan and Libya took some steps — but not enough — to “get out of the business,” the State Department said Tuesday.
Iran has intensified its backing for violent Palestinian groups that attacked Israel, but it also apparently has reduced its other terror activity, the State Department told Congress.
While Iranian President Mohammad Khatami condemned the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S., supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continued to refer to Israel as a “cancerous tumor” that must be removed.
In this mixed picture, the State Department said there was no evidence that Iran sponsored or knew in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks, a point U.S. law enforcement officials have made privately. And yet, matching Khamenei's rhetoric with action, Iran continued to supply Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian groups with funds, haven, training and weapons.
The report said Iraq provided training and political encouragement to many terror groups, but its main focus was on dissident Iraqis opposed to President Saddam Hussein.
Some of the seven listed countries, particularly Sudan and Libya, took steps to get out of the terrorism business, but “none has yet taken all necessary actions to divest itself of ties to terrorism,” the report said.
Overall, terrorist attacks claimed a record number of lives — 3,547 — in 2001, about 90 percent of them in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, the State Department said.
While the number of people who died in terror attacks went up, the number of international terror attacks declined to 346, down from 426 in 2000. A little more than half of the attacks, 178, were bombings against an international oil pipeline in Colombia.
The report called the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and an airline that crashed in Pennsylvania, “the worst international terrorist attack ever” — with the four coordinated suicide attacks by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network killing more than 3,000 people from more than 78 countries.
It was the “bloodiest day on American soil since the Civil War,” said Francis X. Taylor, who directs the department's office to counter terrorism, and the most devastating international terrorist attack in world history.
In any event, a terror strike deriving from 50 years of bankrupt US foreign policy is inevitable.
In any event, a terror strike deriving from 1,400 years of bankrupt Islamic morality is inevitable...
Deport them now, for our safety - and theirs.
You sound like a typical talking-head liberal... and/or Pat Buchanan.
What about Pakistan? Its ISI intelligence service has been proven to assist terrorists attack India. Also as theonly Islamic nation with a nuke arsenal, and the fact it has a large base of Islamic zealots with a chip on their shoulder, don't you think it is a bigger threat than most of the nations listed above eg Sudan, Cuba, Syria, and even Libya?
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