Posted on 12/26/2003 8:30:06 PM PST by stradivarius
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One or more terror suspects may have escaped due to a premature disclosure in France of the security concerns behind the cancellation of Christmas flights to Los Angeles, U.S. officials said on Friday.
Six flights between Paris and Los Angeles were canceled on Wednesday and Thursday at the urging of Washington after U.S. officials spotted what they believed were suspicious names on lists of those due to board the planes.
Air France made clear at the time the cancellations had been ordered for security reasons.
U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials had hoped all the suspects could be detained as they showed up for the flights, said a senior U.S. official familiar with the situation who did not want to be identified.
The official said "a chorus of groans" from the Department of Homeland Security to the White House went out when the French disclosed the reason for the flight cancellations.
Washington believed that the longer publicity could have been avoided, "the greater the chance to catch anybody else who was suspected of being involved," he said. "The French announcement caught everyone off guard."
Nine people on the passenger list for Air France Flight AF068 to Los Angeles on Dec. 24 -- the first flight grounded -- were questioned and released.
One was French and the others were four Americans, two Germans, an Algerian and a Belgian, a French Interior Ministry spokesman said.
A source close to French anti-terror investigating judges told Reuters in Paris: "We have not detected passengers with the profile of people belonging to a radical Islamic group... All the checks so far have come to nothing."
U.S. concerns centered on passengers whose names matched those on a U.S. terrorism watch list, but who failed to show up for the flights, officials said.
Among them was a Tunisian passenger reported to be a licensed pilot and suspected of having ties to al Qaeda, which is blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks on the United States.
The French news agency, Agence France-Presse, quoted a French anti-terrorist police source as saying the Tunisian had been the focus of a U.S. intelligence warning, but the man was still in Tunisia, not France, and was unknown to French police.
Another senior U.S. official said it was too early to say whether a terror plot had been thwarted.
"It's still being looked at with this whole situation," the official said. He said crew members were of concern to U.S. investigators along with the no-show passengers.
U.S. officials have not publicly discussed the issue of whether potential hijackers would be likely to check in under names known to U.S. intelligence.
Air France resumed service to Los Angeles on Friday, though the initial flight, AF068, was delayed for nearly three hours by security checks amid heightened airline vigilance.
Asked about France's handling of the cancellations, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "We appreciate the assistance being provided by our international partners."
A French embassy spokeswoman in Washington declined to discuss any suggestion the French authorities might have let the cat out of the bag prematurely.
"We cooperate on a daily basis with our American counterparts in the fight against terrorism," said the spokeswoman, Natalie Loiseau. "This time it was made more public because there were flight cancellations."
Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said in an interview with CNN on Friday that U.S. collaboration with the French was "great" "We ... decided it was in the interest of the safety of the passengers, given the information that we shared, that we canceled those flights," he said.
The United States has been on heightened alert for attacks since Sunday after what the U.S. intelligence community described as a sharp jump in intercepted communications about a possible attack during or after the Christmas holidays. (Additional reporting by Cyrille Cartier)
exactly.
Thank you for correcting my pronunciation.
"Minkeys" is much, much bettaire.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.