Remember them finding those explosives in that locker at the Train Station in downtown Philly.....it makes sense now!
If the Rats turn from their patriotic leaning, reflected last night, and start fighting defense dollars contained in the coming budget, it will be time for afterburner action.
Major population centers are typically democrat strongholds with all the liberal leftist crap emminating. Forgive me, but if some of these social garbage heaps were leveled by terrorist actions, or parts of city given a strong dose of World Reality, it just might wake scare enough of the Utopian crap out of those general populace's to tilt the political landscape back to something sensible.
I sometimes wonder if everything doesn't happen for a reason, or if there isn't a silver lining in every cloud:)
Even though I live 120 miles from Grand Coulee if they should ever
blow it up our home would probably be 30 feet under water.
This is scary, but what would be even scarier is if they target the chemical depot
just across the border in Or. from where I live.
Maybe we should all be doing more racial profiling.
I don't think the White House was ever high on the list.
Seattle is repeatedly mentioned in information gathered by U.S. intelligence sources monitoring suspected al-Qaida terrorists and their sympathizers, and the Department of Justice has ordered an investigation to find out why.
The references to Seattle and the recent discovery of photographs of the city on a computer hard drive recovered from Osama bin Laden's fractured stronghold near Tora Bora, Afghanistan, led to a decision by Justice officials to determine whether the city or any of its landmarks, such as the Space Needle, may be a target, a source said yesterday.
"The photographs were cumulative of other intelligence," said one high-ranking source, who asked not to be identified. "While they, of themselves, would be a concern, they are not the first time Seattle has come up in connection with intelligence around possible terrorist acts."
Another source, who also requested anonymity, said Seattle has surfaced regularly in intelligence data reviewed by analysts in Washington, D.C. "The city has earned the ignominious distinction of coming up very frequently on the nonspecific threat alerts," the source said. "It's certainly in the top five, and my guess is that it is behind only New York and Washington."
And while the news has been filled with reports of a possible terrorist plot to fly a hijacked jet into one of the country's nuclear power plants, such as the plant on the Hanford nuclear reservation in Eastern Washington, published reports say the al- Qaida operative who told the FBI of the plot has not been credible in the past and the information has not been corroborated.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge told Washington state officials it's too early to draw conclusions from the material coming out of Tora Bora.
"He said it would be entirely premature to try to characterize any of the information that we know refers to Seattle or the state of Washington simply because of the sheer volume of material recovered in Afghanistan, all of which is being painstakingly reviewed," said National Guard Maj. Gen. Tim Lowenberg, Gov. Gary Locke's liaison with the Office of Homeland Security. Lowenberg spoke with Ridge yesterday afternoon.
A senior counterterrorism official in Washington, D.C., also speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military and CIA have pulled enough documents out of Afghanistan caves and al-Qaida safe houses to fill a warehouse on the city's edge. Deciphering the information, most of it in Arabic and some of it coded, has been difficult.
When Seattle came up repeatedly in intelligence reports, officials monitored the phenomenon with curiosity and growing concern. Then came the discovery of the photographs in Afghanistan.
One source likened it to a homeowner who woke up one morning to find footprints in the back yard. If it happened once, it probably wouldn't be a concern. If that happened several times, the homeowner would be worried.
"The question has been, 'How many times do you have to find footprints in your yard?' " the source said. "When do you say, 'This is significant'?
"The decision has been made that we can't ignore this anymore, that we can't write this off."
While the FBI has acknowledged talking to Locke and Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske, who said security at some Seattle landmarks has been increased in recent weeks, the bureau is sounding a note of caution.
"Along with all of this, I can say that we have no specific knowledge of any plot or plan of terrorism in the state of Washington in the past, present or future," said Charles Mandigo, the special agent in charge of the Seattle office of the FBI.
There is considerable speculation about why Seattle has kept surfacing in the intelligence data. One senior source believes it may have something to do with a misguided belief among the terrorists that Seattle was a target in 1999, when Ahmed Ressam was arrested coming across the U.S.-Canadian border with the makings of a powerful bomb in the trunk of his rental car.
The al-Qaida terrorists "appear to be goal-oriented," said the source, pointing out that a failed attempt to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993 was followed by the tragically successful Sept. 11 attacks.
Seattle and Ressam, who trained in bin Laden's Afghan terrorist camps in 1998, are indelibly linked, and that may have raised the city's profile as a possible target. That's despite the fact that Ressam has since confessed that his intent was to place a suitcase bomb in a terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Seattle was merely a stopover.
Washington officials and members of the state's congressional delegations were either unaware or would not confirm that the city's name had come up repeatedly in intelligence circles.
At a news conference in Seattle yesterday, Sen. Patty Murray said she did not believe the general nature of the threat had changed since Sept. 11, despite the discovery of the photos. Murray viewed the photos for the first time yesterday and said they appeared to be old and of little or no intelligence value.
"They are actually photos that any tourist could take of sites that are well-known here in Washington," she said.
Murray was assured by security chief Ridge yesterday that there is "no new information or no new credible threat that we should be concerned about here in the state of Washington." "Having said that, we are remaining vigilant," she said.
Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Tacoma, agreed that the photographs indicated no specific threats. But he said examining the photos made him think that Seattle was "under surveillance."
The photos included images of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the Pike Place Market, the now-demolished Kingdome and a Boeing building, among several others.
Dicks said the photographs should serve as a warning for the U.S. to keep up its guard and to increase security even further.
The Northwest, he said, was replete with "interesting targets," including Microsoft, Boeing and the state's military bases.
Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has acknowledged that it sent a memo Jan. 23 to reactor operators and others warning of a possible plot to fly a hijacked jetliner into one of the nation's nuclear power plants.
The agency warning was based on an FBI debriefing of an al-Qaida senior operative and allegedly involved recruitment of three terrorists who were recruiting "non-Arab" men to help, according to a copy of the memorandum. The FBI says the plot information has not been corroborated and the source has not been credible in the past, according to published reports.
The Jan. 23 memo was sent to the nation's 103 nuclear power plants. The first NRC licensee notified, according to the memo, was the Columbia Generating Station on the Hanford nuclear reservation.
An FBI official familiar with the memo said "nothing should be read into" that fact. Since Sept. 11, Energy Northwest has received more than 20 special notices related to possible security threats, according to spokesman Don McManman. "We can't go to any higher state of alert." Concern about a possible attack on U.S. nuclear facilities also has been heightened by discoveries of crude drawings of U.S. power plants among the al-Qaida documents seized during the war in Afghanistan.
Todd Young, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Richard "Doc" Hastings, whose sprawling 4th District includes Hanford, said the Office of Homeland Security sent out a general alert Jan. 16 of potential threats to dams and nuclear power plants. But he emphasized the alerts were general and listed no specific targets.
Seattle Times staff reporters David Postman and Hal Bernton contributed to this report.
I am reminded of the British dam-busting operation along the Rhur in WWII.
