Posted on 08/12/2005 7:37:58 AM PDT by JediForce
The FBI is warning police that al-Qaida cells may attempt to use fuel trucks as weapons to attack Los Angeles, New York and Chicago on the fourth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in history.
Though officials stress the warning is based on uncorroborated intelligence, the FBI used a computer network to spread the word that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network could hit the U.S. again on or around Sept. 11.
The intelligence originated from FBI headquarters in Washington. It was not immediately clear why the bulletin was sent without details on its reliability.
The warning grew out of intelligence developed from an overseas source indicating that terrorists might seek to steal fuel tanker trucks in order to inflict "mass casualties" by staging an anniversary attack, officials told the New York Times.
The information led FBI joint terrorism task forces in Los Angeles and Newark, N.J., to alert other government and law enforcement officials privately this week about the threat, the law enforcement officials said.
Several government officials in Washington who were briefed on the threat said it was described as credible and specific enough to warrant attention.
There are no immediate plans by the Department of Homeland Security to raise the national threat level.
Domestic security officials have long thought that tanker trucks could be used in terrorist attacks. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are considered at the top of potential targets, along with Washington and Las Vegas, because of their size, high profiles, traffic, symbolic value and past plots by al-Qaeda, reports the Times.
The original alert, issued by an FBI terrorism task force in Los Angeles warned that "al-Qaida leaders plan to employ various types of fuel trucks as vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices in an effort to cause mass casualties in the U.S. prior to the 19th of Sept," according to a law enforcement official who had read it. "Attacks are planned specifically for New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. It is unclear whether the attacks will occur simultaneously or be spread out over a period of time, and the goal of the attack is to collapse the U.S. economy."
It also warned that terrorists would seek to hijack gasoline tankers or trucks hauling oxygen and ram them into a gasoline station to cause major explosions. Confirming what the FBI has never confirmed before – that al-Qaida has active sleeper cells in the U.S. – the report said "the attackers will be members of small al-Qaida cells, which are spread throughout the U.S."
It is posted right in Breaking News beneath this post. :-)
Oh, so that is where the original post was hidden.
Sometimes you really have to put your thinking cap on to find these things! :-)
LOL
> Sometimes you really have to put your thinking cap
> on to find these things! :-)
And sometimes even that doesn't help.
The site really needs full-text search (yes, you can
use Google/Yahoo for that, but they don't index new
FR content instantly).
It would also help if the posting-preview engine ran
comparisons to recently posted material and warned
about obvious matches.
Meanwhile, don't leave the keys in the tanker tractor.
The warning phase will last from 17 -20, with 22 being the likely kick off.
The go has been given.
Why do all the scariest stories always seem to come from World Nut Daily?
You would think that "FBI WARNS OF TANKER ATTACKS" would have brought this right up when I searched for it. But maybe my tinfoil hat was on too tight this morning. :-)
JEDI.
I saw this in the MSM first believe it or not. But I figured that WND would have it at my fingertips...they usually do on stories like this.....even though I view them with the same skeptical eye as most do.
Perhaps the same type of terrorists that tried to attack London the second time will steal milk or water tankers by accident....one can only hope. :-)
I'm not discounting the possibility that we will be attacked.. in fact, I often wonder what they (the bad guys) are waiting for.
However, I was pointing out the fact that seemingly every week, I see these hysterical sounding reports and they almost always come from that site.
JediForce,
Don't feel bad. It's happened to me before and I consider myself the Internet Search Queen (as do many of my friends). I agree with the poster above who said that the site needs a full text search. I would love to be able to "Google" FR. Actually, I think that Google searches do bring up FR threads....I wonder...I'm off to do some investigating.
Candi
> I would love to be able to "Google" FR. Actually, I
> think that Google searches do bring up FR threads....I
> wonder...I'm off to do some investigating.
Yep. Just use the advanced menu
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en
and restrict the search to
DOMAIN: [www.freerepublic.com]
This only finds stuff as recent (or older) than the last
time Google trawled FR, which is always some hours ago.
It will keep you from posting a dupe from yesterday or
last week.
That is good to know! Thank you!!!!!
A couple of weeks ago while returning north on I-95 from a visit to Florida, we just crossed into South Carolina from Georgia and saw where what appeared to be a tanker truck had crashed into the support column of an I-95 overpass and burned. The entire structure was blackened with a huge traffic jam in the south bound lane of I-95.
It they're trying to kill a lot of people, this doesn't seem like a very effective way of doing it. It would make a big mess though.
You know, we cut people a lot of slack around here, but you've had seven years to come up with a good screen name.
One might think you weren't trying :)
If I foundagoodscreenname, I wouldn't be me anymore. Would I? I'd be a newbie with a clever screen name. How tragic!
We wouldn't want that.
Your screen name has become a classic.
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