Las Vegas Casinos Receive Anonymous Threat in E-Mail
(03-25-04) 18:54 PST LAS VEGAS (AP) --
The FBI received an anonymous threat Thursday against Las Vegas casinos, but authorities concluded it was not credible.
The Nevada Joint Terrorism Task Force said the author of Thursday's threatening e-mail was the same person who made a similar threat last week against an unspecified target in Washington, D.C., according to an FBI statement.
Las Vegas FBI spokesman Todd Palmer said the time frame for both threats had passed without incident.
Palmer said no arrests have been made but the e-mails remain under investigation. He would not comment on the nature of the threat or how many casinos had been targeted.
Greg Bortolin, Gov. Kenny Guinn's spokesman, said the state's homeland security office also had advised that the threats were not credible.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security views Las Vegas as a second-tier terror target because of the millions of tourists who visit every year. Las Vegas is also home to 18 of the 20 largest U.S. hotels
Las Vegas has been mentioned as a possible terrorist target since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In December, authorities canceled a scheduled flight from Paris to Los Angeles after concerns were raised that the jet could have been hijacked and crashed into Las Vegas or another city along its flight path.
Authorities still don't know why five of the Sept. 11 hijackers spent time in Las Vegas in summer 2001.
Yomiuri Shimbun
The Defense Agency's National Institute for Defense Studies on Wednesday expressed concern that a North Korean facility for producing highly enriched uranium would become operational in 2005, enabling it to build two or more enriched-uranium nuclear weapons in addition to plutonium ones.
In a report on the security situation in the East Asian region, the institute said North Korea is capable of deploying 175 to 200 Rodong missiles, each capable of carrying nuclear warheads that could hit any part of Japan.
"Because Japan and the United States have yet to establish effective countermeasures, Tokyo could militarily be taken hostage, which increases the level of Japan's vulnerability," the report said.
The report stressed the importance of building a missile defense program capable of attacking North Korean missile bases.
"To effectively counter missile launches by an enemy country, a strategy to intercept the incoming missiles and to attack their bases must proceed in parallel when one's opponent begins making preparations for such a missile attack," the report said.