[iwar] [fc:Alert.Said.To.Be.Tied.In.Part.To.Monitoring.Of.Al.Qaeda]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-31 05:15:59


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Alert.Said.To.Be.Tied.In.Part.To.Monitoring.Of.Al.Qaeda]
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New York Times
October 31, 2001
Alert Said To Be Tied In Part To Monitoring Of Al Qaeda
By Philip Shenon and Don Van Natta Jr.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 - The Bush administration said today that its latest
nationwide warning of possible terrorist attacks resulted from credible
intelligence sources, some of them connected to Osama bin Laden's network,
Al Qaeda.
Two senior law enforcement officials said the key intelligence was an
electronic intercept overseas of at least one of Mr. bin Laden's associates
speaking in code about an imminent attack on Americans in the United States
or abroad. But they could offer no more information about the specifics of
that intercept, the nature of the attacks or the potential targets.
Today, the Canadian government said it had provided some of the intelligence
that resulted in the alert.
Tom Ridge, the director of homeland security, publicly described the nature
of the intelligence for the first time today, telling reporters at the White
House that "analysts have concluded that the sources were credible because
of their connections with the terrorists we're trying to fight."
"I think you can fairly assume that this information is related to Al Qaeda
or bin Laden, or else we wouldn't have ramped it up," Mr. Ridge, referring
to the nationwide alert issued Monday for possible attacks over the next
week.
In what is becoming a daily news conference by his office, Mr. Ridge said of
the latest intelligence information suggesting new terrorism against
Americans, "The decibel level was louder, and there were more sources."
His explanations did not satisfy some lawmakers who met later in the day
with Mr. Ridge on Capitol Hill and who criticized the administration over
the decision to issue a stark public warning despite the lack of
intelligence detail.
Senator Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, the chairman of the Intelligence
Committee, complained that "the American people are already at a high state
of anxiety."
Mr. Graham compared the situation to that of a doctor making a diagnosis of
a disease without offering a treatment. "At a minimum when an increased
threat announcement is made, there should be some solution offered of what a
family can do to protect themselves," he said.
About 18,000 state and local law- enforcement agencies were notified of the
threat on Monday through a decades-old alert network known as the National
Law-Enforcement Telecommunication System. But the local agencies were given
no more information than the general public about where or how the
terrorists might strike.
The lack of detail in Monday's warning - and a similar terrorism alert on
Oct. 11 - has confused and frustrated state and local law enforcement
officials, who say they are at a loss to respond to such an unspecific
warning.
Mr. Ridge said he understood the frustration, saying: "If we had specific
information about the type of weapon or a specific locations, this would
have certainly been shared with the local or state officials."
"Clearly, if it is community-specific, region-specific, weapon-specific, we
would communicate that immediately," he added. "Unfortunately, we view this
information as credible, but not specific."
Mr. Ridge said that the administration faced a difficult decision on Monday
over whether to issue the alert, which was made public by Attorney General
John Ashcroft and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.
"Look, you get that kind of convergence of information from credible sources
and you have two options," Mr. Ridge said. "You have an option to remain
silent, or you have an option to have General Ashcroft and Director Mueller
put out the alert.
"We decided on the second option - and that's just to tell the American
people."
Perhaps alluding to Canada, Mr. Ridge suggested that some of the
intelligence had come from foreign governments that have stepped up their
intelligence-sharing with the United States since the terrorist attacks on
Sept. 11.
"There's been unprecedented collaboration and coordination among
intelligence-gathering agencies," he said.
The Canadian government said that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
had gathered some of the information that resulted in the alert. Canada's
solicitor general, Lawrence MacAulay, would not describe the evidence but
said it had been shared with the F.B.I.
American officials have said the warning on Monday was the product of both
human and other types of intelligence, including electronic intercepts,
suggesting that Mr. bin Laden may have given a blanket directive to Al Qaeda
terrorists authorizing them to launch terrorist attacks at will.
Mr. Ridge said the intelligence that led to this week's alert was of
"comparable credibility" to the evidence that led to the earlier warning,
and he suggested there would be other, similar alerts in the future.
"From time to time, we may issue the same general alert again," Mr. Ridge
said. "We want America to be on the highest alert."
Administration officials said that the intelligence leading to the alert
arrived at the F.B.I. on Monday and that it was quickly relayed to
counterterrorism analysts who believed the information to be credible and
alarming.
Late in the day, officials said, the agency transmitted the warning over the
Law-Enforcement Telecommunication System, a computer network that connects
virtually every state and local law enforcement office in the country,
including police departments, sheriff's departments, state and municipal
court systems, and probation offices.
The network, which functions as a sort of private e-mail system, was
established in the late 1960's and is run by the state and local agencies in
partnership with the F.B.I. and other federal law-enforcement agencies.
Steven Correll, the network's executive director, said in an interview that
the F.B.I.'s warning on Monday was brief - about two paragraphs - and that
it was relayed within minutes to nearly 330,000 computer terminals around
the country that are connected to the system.
Mr. Correll and a bureau spokesman said information-sharing on the network
was voluntary.
On Monday, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York called for legislation that
would significantly increase the amount of counterterrorism information that
the federal government would be forced to share with local law enforcement
agencies.
Some large police departments have said that they are taking no added
security precautions as a result of Monday's warning, because they have been
at the highest state of alert since Sept. 11.
"We're just continuing with the protocol that's in place," said Sgt. Robert
Cargie of the Chicago Police Department. "There's been a general threat
since Sept. 11. We're remaining vigilant."

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