Posted on 03/02/2002 10:32:04 AM PST by SharpEye
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:01 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Bush Calls Security 'Serious Business'
Key congressional leaders said yesterday the White House did not tell them that President Bush has moved a cadre of senior civilian managers to secret underground sites outside Washington to ensure that the federal government could survive a devastating terrorist attack on the nation's capital.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
New York -- In October, an intelligence alert went out to a small number of government agencies, including the Energy Department's top-secret Nuclear Emergency Search Team, based in Nevada. The report said that terrorists were thought to have obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal, and planned to smuggle it into New York City, a special TIME magazine investigation reveals.
Publishing sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT, the next cover story of TIME will headline: "Can We Stop the Next 9/11?"
The report hits newsstands Monday, March 4th. MORE
The source: a mercurial agent code-named DRAGONFIRE, who intelligence officials believed was of "undetermined" reliability, TIME reports. But DRAGONFIRE'S claim tracked with a report from a Russian general who believed his forces were missing a 10-kiloton device.
That made the DRAGONFIRE report alarming. So did this: detonated in lower Manhattan, a 10-kiloton bomb would kill some 100,000 civilians and irradiate 700,000 more, flattening everything in a half-mile diameter.
Counterterrorist investigators went on their highest state of alert, TIME reports. "It was brutal," a U.S. official told TIME.
It was also highly classified and closely guarded. MORE
Under the aegis of the White House’s Counterterrorism Security Group, part of the National Security Council, the suspected nuke was kept secret so as not to panic the people of New York. Senior FBI officials were not in the loop. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani says he was never told about the threat. In the end, the investigators found nothing, and concluded that DRAGONFIRE'S information was false. But few of them slept better.
Counterterrorism experts and government officials interviewed by TIME say that for all the relative calm since Sept. 11, America’s luck will probably run out again, sooner or later. "It's going to be worse, and a lot of people are going to die," warns one U.S. counterterrorism official. "I don't think there's a damn thing we're going to be able to do about it."
The DRUDGE REPORT has been briefed on other revelations coming from TIME's investigation:
The Coast Guard is arming itself against a possible terrorist attempt to destroy a major U.S. coastal city by detonating a tanker loaded with liquified natural gas.
The Administration has recalled old CIA hands with experience in Central Asia. Says an Administration official: "You ended up going back to retirees because the bench was so light on Afghanistan. We’re still trying to get up to speed."
This week, Tom Ridge’s office plans to announce a new color-coded alert system to warn local law enforcement and the public about threats within U.S. borders, sources tell TIME.
While there is a genuine debate inside the government about whether Osama bin Laden is still alive, there is far less argument about what will happen after Washington is able to confirm that he is dead. A U.S. official told TIME last week that it is widely presumed that al-Qaeda sleeper cells will take retaliatory action once the terrorist leader is killed or proven dead.
"We're as vulnerable today as we were on 9/10 or 9/12," says presidential counselor Karen Hughes. "We just know more."
Developing...
Or, do you know IF your SHADOW KNOWS?
talk about DEVELOPING NEGATIVES!!!
The Amish lifestyle is a double-edged sword. Consider the children. No one enters the Amish church until they choose to do so as an adult, and that is usually from the ages of 20-26. Before that time the young people are allowed to do, for the most part, what they want.
For years, this has been a source of amusement for the "English". We see young men in pastel colors with fashion from Goodwill entering the movie theater with a facial expression as if they were entering an orgy hosted by Caesar himself.
But now, more and more Amish kids get into hardcore drugs during this time and the consequences are more permanent. Many return to the church because it is all they have known and is their support system.
Also, there is a problem with the lack of land. Since they (obviously) don't believe in birth control but nutrition and medicine have advanced, they have very large families and, traditionally, the land is meant to be split among the sons for the purposes of inheritance.
The parcels get smaller and smaller and Amish need to find other forms of work -- which puts them in greater contact with the outside world.
Now, I am of the philosophy that problems we all have problems, and cannot escape from them. The problems of the Amish seem more "simple" but they are no less real to someone who tries to feed his family and protect them from corrupt influences.
We tend to romanticize them because we look at them and say "Their life is so difficult, but they don't have some of the problems that I have." While asceticism has its place, it does not make life better, IMHO.
I hope that helps.
Have lived closer to Hutterites who are not quite so strict. Must confess I have a fondness for community sorts of groups. But they too have their own problems, to be sure.
None of us escapes this life without invitations and opportunities to be stretched and hopefully refined.
Blessings,
Thats right' ever since they murdered Lincoln because he veto'ed a bill authorizing a central bank. The same thing almost happened to Jackson... The Matrix is real. For proof consider the last election. The America could come up with was a certified moron and a guy that resembles Alfred E. Neuman. Can you hear someone laughing US.
Would Jefferson Think We Are Free? -
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