Threat Matrix: Daily Terror Threat

Two Chinese diplomats, away from their Los Angeles consulate improperly, recently sped their vehicle past a Los Alamos National Laboratory guard post near classified facilities in what U.S. officials think was an intelligence mission, The Washington Times has learned.

All is well.

Glitch disrupts Delta flights

By DIANE R. STEPP
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/01/04

An apparent computer glitch grounded Atlanta-bound Delta Air Lines flights Saturday afternoon and caused delays and cancellations of some flights nationwide and internationally.

By Saturday evening the airline was slowly restoring service to its main hub with a backup system. Operations were expected to return to normal by late this morning. The Associated Press reported late Saturday night that the computer was back online.

Gregory Smith/AP
(ENLARGE)
Gregg Lowery, right, and Rasheed Ayodele, left, watch the arrivals monitors as they wait to pick up family, Saturday at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta. Travelers were delayed due to a Delta computer problem.

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One- to three-hour delays affected many incoming flights. One scheduled arrival from Washington's Dulles International Airport was more than five hours late, according to a posting of Delta's arriving flights at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

Delta spokeswoman Catherine Stengel said "technical difficulties" arose about 3 p.m., leading to delays and cancellations systemwide that halted all scheduled Atlanta arrivals for about two hours.

"We're still investigating the cause," she said without specifying the nature of the problem that struck the nation's third-largest carrier.

Another Delta spokeswoman, Liza Caceres, told The Associated Press the traffic interruption was "not a safety or security issue."

Arriving passenger Donna Robins said her flight was held at the gate in Phoenix for more than an hour. "They told us something was wrong with the computer and that they were bringing in a backup," she said.

Brenda Lopes of Fall River, Mass., was waylaid in Atlanta on a return trip from Fort Myers, Fla., to Providence, R.I. Traveling with her pregnant daughter and 3-year-old granddaughter, Lopes decided to take Delta up on its offer to put them up in a hotel overnight.

"At first they told us we'd be leaving Atlanta at 6:30 p.m., then 8:30 p.m. and then it was 10:30 p.m. I was afraid it might be tomorrow morning before we got out and didn't think it was a good idea to spend the night in the airport with a 3-year-old," she said.

By 9 p.m., Delta spokeswoman Stengel said operations were "slowly improving." By 11 p.m., the Associated Press reported that the computer was back on line.

FYI This is upsetting

Health officials brace for summit
Bioterror tops list of fears for G-8

By DAVID WAHLBERG
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/02/04

SAVANNAH — Global leaders attending next month's Group of Eight summit on Sea Island might be accompanied by unwelcome guests: deadly germs, arriving naturally or through bioterrorism.

With thousands expected in southeast Georgia for the June 8-10 event, organizers fear major outbreaks of disease, or clashes between protesters and police, could overwhelm a coastal medical system more accustomed to sunburns and the occasional St. Patrick's Day brawl. But health officials say they're ready.

With $60 million in new bioterrorism funding statewide, plus the experience of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and a major coastal evacuation during Hurricane Floyd five years ago, authorities have a new strategy. They say they're pairing their traditional methods of detecting and responding to medical emergencies with a new post-Sept. 11 vigilance: Do what you normally do to combat disease, but do more of it. And assume the worst of motives.

"We plan to handle this in the same way we would with any potential outbreak," said Susan Lance-Parker, an epidemiologist with the Georgia Division of Public Health. "But we'll have a higher index of suspicion of something being done intentionally."

During the summit — which will bring together the leaders of the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia — federal authorities will be in charge of medical care on Sea Island. But if President Bush or other dignitaries required hospital care, they would go to Shands Hospital in Jacksonville, say officials at Shands and other area hospitals the Secret Service briefed.

Shands, a 700-bed facility 70 miles south of Sea Island, has a Level 1 trauma center capable of treating the most serious cases, said Dr. David Vukich, its senior vice president for medical affairs.

Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah, 70 miles north of Sea Island, also has a Level 1 trauma center. But with the international media and possibly thousands of protesters in Savannah, officials are reserving Memorial for the public, said Scott Regan, executive vice president of the 500-bed hospital.

Savannah has two other hospitals, St. Joseph's and Candler, with a combined 920 beds. All three Savannah hospitals, like many in metro Atlanta, occasionally have turned away patients recently because they have been full, Regan said. The G-8 summit could exacerbate the crowding. But officials say that in a crisis, patients with less serious conditions might be discharged and inland hospitals could provide additional beds.

Southeast Georgia Health System's 317-bed hospital in Brunswick, just across the causeway from St. Simons Island, expects to be busy. Its urgent care center on St. Simons Island, which normally closes in the evening, will be open around the clock.

Brunswick hospital officials have mounted a substantial readiness campaign, said Marjorie Mathieu, vice president for support services. They booked hotel rooms for doctors in case traffic gets tied up.

To prepare for bioterrorism, they have run decontami-

nation drills under a specially equipped tent. In case they need to fly patients to Savannah or Jacksonville, they have clearance to use medical helicopters despite federal airspace restrictions.

The prospect of mayhem near Brunswick, population 16,000, has many worried.

"We do disaster planning all the time, but this is a big unknown," Mathieu said. "The entire community is in an apprehensive mode."

As hospitals gear up, health officials are increasing efforts to detect disease — and bioterrorism. State and local health agencies will be in charge. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also will have people on hand.

Symptoms of some of the six agents the CDC lists as the top bioterrorism concerns — anthrax, botulism, plague, smallpox, tularemia and viral hemorrhagic fevers such as the Ebola virus — can take days to develop and can initially be vague. That complicates efforts to recognize the germs.

To be able to spot a cause for alarm during the summit, health officials are gathering background data on patients' most common complaints, from headaches to rashes to nausea. When the crowds arrive, the authorities will see if any conditions seem to be showing up more than usual, said Lance-Parker of the state health division. A blip in the incidence of blurred vision or slurred speech, for example, could trigger an investigation for botulism poisoning.

The $60 million in bioterrorism funds Georgia has received from the CDC in the past two years has boosted preparedness throughout the state. But officials have speeded up some improvements near the coast before the summit. Drug caches, including cyanide antidotes and potassium iodide pills to reduce harm from radiation exposure, soon will be distributed in southeast Georgia. A new biological testing lab in Waycross means samples no longer must go to Atlanta.

It is unlikely the Savannah area is one of the 30 or more secret locations that are part of Biowatch, a federal program featuring air detection devices to sniff out deadly agents. But similar efforts are set up during high-level events such as the G-8 summit, said Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota epidemiologist and one of the top government bioterrorism consultants.

One of the ways terrorists could wreak havoc is by contaminating food. Federal authorities will maintain tight control over food on Sea Island, testing samples for germs, said James Drinnon, director of environmental health for Georgia's East Health District in Savannah.

But it's not feasible to test all food for bacteria and viruses, and it would take days for some results. So authorities will focus more on tracking food from distributor to table, said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Center for Food Safety.

"Testing is not going to be the solution," Doyle said. "Security is."

So is practice. During two days of drills last week, area health officials reviewed what they would do in an emergency using a mock disaster scenario: a simulated release of anthrax at a shopping mall.

After learning of the "illness" of hundreds of people during the drill, the authorities called the CDC to tap into the Strategic National Stockpile, a collection of drugs, vaccines and emergency equipment stored at 12 secret locations across the country. They converted a high school into a clinic and distributed antibiotics, questioning volunteer "patients" to determine whether they needed medication.

The drills "allow us to be more comfortable in a real emergency, whether it be anthrax or smallpox or whatever," said Dr. Diane Weems, medical officer for the Savannah health district.

The only problem: not enough "patients" showed up. Health officials only hope that's their biggest concern during the summit.

This is troubling and long but worth the read.

From far and wide, O Canada, terrorist killers come to thee

By PATRICK GRADY
Saturday, April 10, 2004 - Page D7

Cold Terror:

How Canada Nurtures and Exports

Terrorism Around the World

By Stewart Bell

Wiley, 243 pages, $36.99

Canadians will be madder than hell after they read Stewart Bell's shocking account of how the Canadian government has allowed Sikh, Tamil and Islamic terrorists to come into our home and turn it into a safe house for international terror.

Bell, who writes for the National Post and is, in my view, Canada's leading reporter on national security and terrorism, has taken on the courageous task of warning Canadians about the terrorists living among us. This has stirred up a real hornets' nest. He has been threatened by many who don't like his message and has been branded as anti-Islamic by the Canadian Islamic Congress. Such is the fate of those who say what others are afraid to say.

Bell's litany of terrorist incidents around the world involving Canadian terrorists is long enough to qualify Canada for membership in the Axis of Evil. The most infamous are: the 1985 Air India bombing; the 1991 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi; the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing in New York; the 1993 assassination of Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa; the 1995 blast at the Egyptian embassy in Islamabad; the murder of 58 tourists in Egypt in 1997; the 1997 truck explosion in Sri Lanka that killed 100; the bloody Bali night club bombings in 2002; and the 2003 attack on the housing compound in Riyadh.

Bell provides many examples of terrorists who took advantage of liberal immigration and refugee policies to enter Canada. A few of the most notorious bogus refugees include: Manickavasagam Suresh, the Canadian leader of the Tamil Tigers; Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammed, who took part in the deadly assault on an El Al passenger plane in Athens in 1968; Essam Marzouk, who trained the bombers of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; and Ahmed Ressam, the wannabe Millennium Los Angeles airport bomber, who was caught at the Port Angeles border trying to drive into the United States with a carload of explosives.

Not all the Canadian terrorists profiled by Bell are phony refugees; some are landed immigrants or citizens. He devotes a whole chapter to the saga of the Khadr family. Ahmed Khadr, the father of this viperous clan, long exploited his Canadian citizenship and CIDA funding to support al-Qaeda's global jihad, only returning to Canada for free health care and to raise money in the mosques. His links to Osama bin Laden were so close that he was sought by the U.S. government in connection with the 9/11 investigations. Unfortunately, because of the time lag in book publishing, Bell wasn't able to bring us up to date on all the recent treasonous activities of the Khadrs. For this, the reader should tune in for Terrence McKenna's shocking documentary on the family the next time it's rerun on CBC Newsworld.

St. Catharines' al-Qaeda brothers, Mohammed and Abdulrahman Jabarah, are also profiled. Mohammed was involved in a planned Singapore embassy plot that was broken up. He was caught in Oman and turned over to CSIS. At his request, and over the vociferous objection of Canadian Muslim and civil liberties groups, he was subsequently turned over to the Americans, where he is singing like a canary on his fellow terrorists, including those involved in the Bali bombing. His brother Abdulrahman was killed by Saudi security authorities following the attack on the Western housing complex in Riyadh. It's hard to believe that these two nice young men were brought up in Canada and educated at Holy Cross Secondary School in St. Catharines.

According to Bell's diagnosis of the problem, "CSIS and the RCMP have been effective at monitoring the activities of terrorist groups operating in Canada, but they have been unable to put them out of business, in large part because their political masters have not given them the tools they need to do so." In contrast, other recent books, such as Andrew Mitrovica's Covert Entry, suggest that all may not be well at CSIS.

Bell names the prominent politicians who he feels have contributed to the terrorist problem. He contends that former prime minister Jean Chrétien never really recognized the seriousness of the terrorist threat. The best evidence of Chrétien's naivety was that he was so easily manipulated into putting in a good word with Pakistan's prime minister at the time, Benazir Bhutto, to get Ahmed Khadr released from prison in Pakistan.

While the Sikh and Tamil homeland wars are troubling enough, Bell worries most about al-Qaeda-style radical Islam, because it preaches and practises "violence without limits" and "serves not only a strategic purpose, but fulfills the will of God." To Islamic terrorists, chemical, nuclear and biological weapons are "the bigger, the better." He observes that "their hatred arises from centuries-old grievances and their aim is long term: a world under the rule of Islam, the one true faith." Scary!

The tragic events of 3/11 in Madrid, where almost 200 people were massacred by Islamic terrorists, could be repeated here. In a chilling audiotaped warning following the Bali bombing in November, 2002, a man purporting to be Osama bin Laden explicitly threatened Canada for supporting the United States in Afghanistan.

Stewart Bell's clarion call for action needs to be heeded before the ticking Canadian terrorist time bomb blows up closer to home. If Canadian terrorists aren't stopped before they use weapons of mass destruction in the United States, we'll have far bigger problems than keeping the border open for trade.

Patrick Grady is an Ottawa economist who is writing a novel about Canadian terrorists.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040410/BKCOLD10/TPEntertainment/Books

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