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Follow-up or cover-up?

A flapping tent. Bottles of urine. Amid fears of a pre-election terror attack, jumpy Feds are investigating everything in their efforts to protect the first post-9/11 national political convention
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 3:28 p.m. ET July 28, 2004

July 28 - The night before the Democratic National Convention was to begin, federal security forces in Boston went into high alert. A National Guard trooper reported spotting a possible parachutist drifting through the sky toward the "hard zone" security perimeter that surrounds the Fleet Center convention hall. Police radios crackled with urgent messages. Within minutes, local TV stations were reporting that two suspects were in custody.

The city buzzed with tension: had an Al Qaeda commando squad launched an air attack on the Democratic gathering?

In a secret bunker in the bowels of a nearby government building, officers of the Federal Protective Service, a branch of the Department of Homeland Security, quickly started clicking on their Web browsers, which have real-time links to 75 surveillance cameras positioned around the downtown Boston area. The browsers were loaded with software enabling monitors in the bunker to manipulate the cameras toward various angles and to enlarge the shots.

Within minutes, Ron Libby, the service's New England regional director, told NEWSWEEK, the camera operators had figured it out: The guardsman who thought he spotted a parachutist had actually seen a tent canopy flapping in the wind atop a nearby building. Radar showed no aircraft anywhere in the neighborhood. And the TV reports of "suspects in custody"? It turned out the TV stations had been scanning the Boston police radios. There had indeed been two suspects detained not far from the Fleet Center. But they weren't invading airborne terrorists. They were a pair of drunks picked up for disturbing the domestic peace. (snipped)

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5539037/site/newsweek/