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From: Bart (129.171.32.13)
White House Jumped Gun on Politically-Timed Terror Alert The Bush Administration jumped the gun with their high-profile "terror alert" two weeks ago -- an alert planned, coincidently, right on the heels of the Democratic National Convention. Two weeks ago, when Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned of possible al-Qaida attacks, the "where" was very specific: financial institutions in New York City, Washington and Newark, N.J. The "when," however, was a mystery. And since Ridge's announcement, the Bush administration has discovered no evidence of imminent plans by terrorists to attack U.S. buildings, a White House official admitted Thursday. "Perhaps our announcement was premature," the official admitted sheepishly. Some documents and computer files seized in al-Qaida raids included surveillance reports of the financial buildings during 2000 and 2001, which prompted warnings Aug. 1 from the White House about possible threats. But nothing in the documents themselves has suggested any attack was planned soon, the official said. "I have not seen an indication of an imminent operation," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity with reporters from nearly a dozen news organizations. Investigators are still poring over volumes of the seized information. Immediately after the warning, police sealed off some streets near the Citigroup Center building and the New York Stock Exchange in New York; put employees at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington through extra security checks; and added barricades and a heavily armed presence around Prudential Financial Inc.'s headquarters in Newark. In Washington, Capitol Police blocked all traffic flow near the building and began searching vehicles, even though no new threats to the Capitol had been found. District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams protested the measures, calling them "unworkable and unacceptable." Subway riders in Washington have had to get used to sharing their commutes with police bearing machine guns. New Yorkers have been agitated by FBI warnings of threats posed by helicopters and limousines, while city authorities are beefing up security in advance of the Republican National Convention, which begins Aug. 30. The White House homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, told Fox News Sunday last weekend that authorities believe discovery of the surveillance has disrupted al-Qaida's plans to carry out the attacks on the financial buildings. The FBI and local police still haven't determined whether the surveillance was performed by a single person or several people, and the FBI has not yet identified anyone involved in the surveillance, the White House official said Thursday, adding that the detailed reconnaissance indicated "an awful lot of time and energy put into it." The surveillance records had been accessed for unknown purposes this spring, months later than authorities had previously disclosed, the official said. The government had said earlier that some files had been reviewed as recently as January. But some within the Department of Homeland Security questioned the timing of the terror alerts, issued immediately after the Democratic National Convention closed in Boston and succesfully diverting attention from the official launch of Senator John Kerry's campaign for President. "We had the information before the convention and we didn't announce it," one DHS agent grumbles. "We had the information during the convention and didn't announcement. Nothing changed but we dropped the alert bomb right after the convention. If I were a Democrat, I'd be suspicious." Another administration official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, claims the White House still would have issued the terror alerts even if it had known at the time that the surveillance documents did not point to an imminent operation. The administration remains deeply concerned about information uncovered separately in the spring suggesting al-Qaida was plotting a major attack inside the United States - perhaps in August or September - to disrupt the elections, the first official said. None of the documents or computer files recovered in the recent raids in Pakistan mentioned any election-related plots, the same official said. This official said unspecified intelligence indicates al-Qaida's plans for an attack before the election were "more than merely aspirational" but declined to be more specific because it might reveal the information's source. Timing was unclear, the official said, acknowledging that intelligence agencies "wish we had a sense." Senior U.S. officials - including Townsend, Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice - have expressed similar concerns since March about possible al-Qaida efforts to disrupt the U.S. elections. Townsend said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation that she believes the surveillance of the U.S. financial buildings might be related to the election-period threat.
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