This threat alert seemed different. The timing once again seemed convenient, right on the heels of the Dem convention, but Tom Ridge’s announcement about a new possible al Queda attack had the makings of a serious risk.
Consider the report on the front page of the Washington Post yesterday, with a few phrases bolded for emphasis.
The federal government raised the terror alert level yesterday to orange for the financial services sectors in New York City, Washington and Newark, citing the discovery of remarkably detailed intelligence showing that al Qaeda operatives have been plotting for years to blow up specific buildings with car or truck bombs.
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the newly acquired information points to five potential targets: the International Monetary Fund and World Bank headquarters in Washington; the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Center in New York; and the Prudential Financial building in Newark.
The intelligence shows that al Qaeda has been methodically casing those buildings, and perhaps others, since well before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and also since then, according to one senior U.S. intelligence official who briefed reporters on the alleged plot. Authorities said they do not know when the operatives were planning to carry out any of the bombings.
Sounds horrifying, right? When Howard Dean suggested that the timing may have been influenced by politics, the right went apoplectic and condemned his audacity.
Well, as Jon Stewart might say, it’s a funny story…
Here’s the lead item on the front page of the Post today:
Most of the al Qaeda surveillance of five financial institutions that led to a new terrorism alert Sunday was conducted before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and authorities are not sure whether the casing of the buildings has continued, numerous intelligence and law enforcement officials said yesterday.
More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.
“There is nothing right now that we’re hearing that is new,” said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. “Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don’t know that.”
It’s mornings like this that lead me to believe I’m not nearly cynical enough.
Not to be left out, the New York Times reported a similar revelation.
Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.
It seems Ridge left out some of this pertinent information when he announced the threat. I’m sure it was just an oversight.