Posted on 06/19/2002 7:15:47 AM PDT by Nexus
No sign of al Qaida raiders along LA coast
By Hil Anderson
From the National Desk
Published 6/18/2002 8:47 PM
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LOS ANGELES, June 18 (UPI) -- There has been no sign of a boatload of al Qaida terrorists that intelligence reports indicated were sailing toward the Southern California coast aboard a merchant ship with the intent of coming ashore in the Los Angeles area, the FBI said Tuesday.
"Obviously, we have investigated and are continuing to investigate, but we have no information to substantiate the report," Cheryl Mamura, an FBI spokesman in Los Angeles, told United Press International.
The Washington Times reported Tuesday that as many as 40 terrorists, along with a cache of weapons, boarded a ship in the Middle East last month and had been thought to be en route to the waters off Los Angeles, possibly unloading on Santa Catalina Island, a resort destination about 26 miles off the coast of Long Beach, one of the busiest ports in the United States.
The FBI told the Times that several people in the Los Angeles area had been questioned about the report in recent days and that the threat potential was considered reduced at this time.
Mamura would not comment on the investigation or whether increased security measures were being taken in the beach and harbor areas, although residents of one ocean-front neighborhood told UPI that Los Angeles police officers appeared to be conducting more coastline late-night patrols on foot and by four-wheel drive vehicle the past few weeks. Also the distinctive engine sounds of U.S. Coast Guard helicopters have become de rigueur of recent genre in some beach communities late at night.
Mamura also confirmed that the concern over the seaborne terrorist threat report was ebbing somewhat since it was first received because, she told UPI, "they were supposed to have arrived in late May."
The voyage from the Middle East to California is a lengthy one that takes oil tankers around six weeks to complete under normal circumstances.
There are also miles of remote beaches where a boat could have offloaded, and port officials have increased security since Sept. 11 with the threat that terrorists could sneak into a U.S. harbor, such as Los Angeles or neighboring Long Beach, hidden in a cargo container, a method frequently used to smuggle illegal aliens in from China.
Gov. Gray Davis' top security adviser, George Vinson, said Monday it was "almost inevitable," that al Qaida would launch some kind of strike on U.S. soil this summer, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
"The intelligence we have been gathering tells us we're probably going to be hit sometime this summer," told the Computer Security Institute NetSec conference in San Francisco.
Los Angeles has had close calls in the past with terrorism. Three of the four airliners hijacked on Sept. 11 were bound for Los Angeles, and Los Angeles International Airport is believed to have been the target of a foiled 1999 bomb plot by an Algerian extremist cell that was based in Canada and had ties to Osama bin Laden terrorist camps in Afghanistan.
By coincidence, LAX is located along the coast and airliners take off over Dockweiler State Beach. Also on the coast are numerous apartments and homes as well as municipal piers, power plants, a wastewater treatment plant and the Chevron oil refinery in El Segundo.
Copyright © 2002 United Press International
Stowaway Terrorists Steal into America by Sea Container
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly Intelligence Report 18 June: Between 75 and 125 operatives of the fundamentalist terror network, al Qaeda, are known to have illegally penetrated the United States in the last two months, mostly through American ports as stowaways in commercial sea containers. Many more are estimated to have slipped through unbeknownst to US authorities.
This clandestine traffic was first exposed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue No. 39, November 30, 2001. In its latest issue, DEBKA-Net-Weekly, June 14, 2002, tracks this burgeoning menace, which is making the United States and the world’s shipping industry increasingly susceptible to the threat of terror attack by invaders from the sea. US port authority sources believe penetrations occurred at New York, New Jersey, Long Beach, Miami and Savannah, Georgia, as well as Port Everglades, Florida. Container, oil and bulk ports are especially vulnerable.
Some of the stowaways arrive complete with arms or explosives, the nature of which - conventional, radioactive, chemical or biological - the US authorities are at great pains to keep dark. However, shipping sources told us witnesses had seen suspect containers appearing to be quarantined after their al Qaeda infiltrators were killed, suggesting the suspected presence of toxic substances.
The threat applies equally to the international container traffic that carries much of the world’s lifeblood. Experts have opined that a “dirty bomb” exploding in a container at sea would stop the world’s container traffic cold until a credible security system for sea-going containers was in place. On May 22, 2002, Fairplay International Shipping Weekly reported:
”More details have emerged about an apparent infiltration of Islamic extremists through US ports during the past two months. Some of the men slipped through security disguised as stevedores, according to Bob Graham, chair of the Senate select committee on intelligence. He said he had seen reports indicating that some extremists might have been wearing safety jackets and protective helmets to give the appearance of dockworkers. US Coast Guard officials have refused to divulge any information about the reports, but Graham stressed: ‘The American people have a right to know.’ He said 25 extremists ‘entered in a foreign country, hid out in a container and then entered the United States’. In some of the stowaway containers, US counter-terror authorities were dismayed to find uniforms of American dockworkers and even US Coast Guards, along with the appropriate tags and ID for free access to port facilities, including off-limits sections. Groups of 5 to 7 of these men dressed as port workers have been sighted hurrying over to waiting vans and driving off at speed.
US Coast Guard, Special Forces and CIA and FBI counter-terror units routinely conduct massive manhunts to fend off the multi-tentacled al Qaeda invasion. Some sources report firefights between hunters and terrorists trapped in sea containers, in which between 15 and 25 terrorists may have died. In Miami and Savanna, containers with secret human burdens were unloaded from incoming vessels. Anti-terror squads shifted the boxes to a quiet corner of the harbor, drilled holes in their sides and filled them with gas and smoke bombs. The stowaways suffocated to death.
For all their efforts, the US hunters have not apprehended a single live al Qaeda terrorist landing by sea.
Background checks for seamen and stevedores, heavily armed National and Coast Guardsmen, special FBI and CIA units patrolling American harbors, gamma-ray devices for inspecting cargoes, quarantine areas in large ports, are part of the changing landscape in US docks. On container terror, US and other intelligence services were again slow to pinpoint the danger despite indications from October 2001of al Qeda plans to exploit sea containers - both for secretly transporting terrorists and as an amphibious terrorist weapon. There were no measures in place to prevent the many armed terror cells from fanning out among ports, mainly in Europe, in order to stow away aboard container vessels bound for US harbors.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources learn that Livorno, Italy, is one of those ports. At least two shipping companies unknowingly targeted for this traffic, one a major American firm and another a reputable Middle East shipping line. Investigators have concluded that al Qaeda owes much of its success in planting its operatives in ship’s containers to its links with criminal elements to be found in most of the world’s big container ports.
In the last two months, hundreds of US agents of all branches of security and intelligence, including Special Forces, have been deployed in ports in Europe and the Far East, where they are developing new security standards and monitoring ocean-going containers before embarkation.
Davis desperately hopes so. Unless he has a chance to play a Giuliani-like post attack role before the partisan TV cameras, he is in big trouble in November.
You know, my garbage cans were all knocked down last night! I was going to blame raccoons, but, now that I think about it, I bet it was those al Qaida people! Those bastards!
--KotS
It appears the CIA is killing these terrorists when they get to our shores..
If any of these maniacs so much as LOOKS at my tomato plants, then they'll wish they were never born!
They are already here, so no more concern???
The newest football team?
And Where is your brother, Lexus?
Being as they are a foreign invading irregular army, I would hope so.
I'd prefer the United States Army deal with them, but the CIA will do. :o)
???
Hmmm, I don't think that would be an allowable name under the PC names committee rules. It seems to cast "Al Qaida" as "bad" guys. I'll bet Al Qaida will be fighting this and perhaps even approach the LA Legislators to enact a state wide ban on using Al Qaida in school names.
This is becoming insane! People are going to start taking these reports like UFO Reports.......
We can't call them Muslim extremists, or murderous thugs, or anything like that. We need some PC terms for them.
Multi-virginally motivated men
Intestinally lacking direct-confrontation avoiders (gutless cowards)
Hygeine-free heartbeat inhibitors (stinkin' murderers)
Congealed, viscous layer of organic matter (scum)
Any others?
BEACH RESIDENTS URGED TO WATCH OUT FOR INVADERS
Exerpt:
The executive committee of the state council of defense has issued a warning to all citizens, particularly those residing along or near the ocean, to be on the alert for enemy landing parties. Kenneth R. Hammaker, executive director to the council said,"...Despite the vigilance of our navy and coast guard patrol boats, it is possible for a submarine to come to the surface near our coast and land saboteurs." "
Not to worry. If they show up we can always fall back to the Rockies.
Huh? The only reason LA-bound planes were chosen was their loaded fuel tanks. Hello, LA -- the hijackers all turned the planes around and hit the East Coast -- I know it's been nine whole months, and your governor is desperate, but if you try hard enough, you can remember the facts.
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