ABCNews: False Alarm?

ABCNews.com ^ | Feb 13, 2003 | Brian Ross

[mikegi]

Feb. 13 — A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.

The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a "dirty bomb" sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.

The informant described a detailed plan that an al Qaeda cell operating in either Virginia or Detroit had developed a way to slip past airport scanners with dirty bombs encased in shoes, suitcases, or laptops, sources told ABCNEWS. The informant reportedly cited specific targets of government buildings and Christian or clerical centers.

[GirlShortstop]

 
#39   ROFLMAO!

[SCARED]

jeez i thought that i had a lot of ammo. i have 5k for each caliber(5 calibers).

[Peach]

Hold on everybody. #1: It's ABC news. All too happy to disseminate information designed to make the Bush administration look bad. #2: "Two senior law enforcement officials" is code for Democratic operatives who are lying to make the Bush administration look bad.

[Alice in Wonderland]

It's not the first time a captured al Qaeda operative has made up a huge story and scared a lot of people.

The Muslim faith permits believers to lie and break agreements with infidels.

[APBaer]

'It's not the first time a captured al Qaeda operative has made up a huge story and scared a lot of people."

Gee, do you think he might have been encouraged in doing that by the fact that the prior operatives weren't skinned alive and buried in pig fat?

[Cvengr]

I seem to remember last week sometime, when 2 mideastern fellows were deplaned after they were observed constantly inhaling and exhaling heavily during their air flight.

I wondered then, considering the shoe-bomber's degree of sophistication, if perhaps they hadn't breathed in a bag of anthrax spores into their lungs in the bathroom, and then walked back to their seats, attempting to breathe the spores back out into the recirculated cabin air. It seems like there's a whole lot of efforts at about that level of sophistication as opposed to guys with their doctrates tackling us.

[turbojugend]

Attention yuppies: you can put away the duct tape and forget the asphyxiation chambers, er... I mean "safety" rooms now, LOL. This reminds me of that last big alert in NYC when after a few days of media histrionics and latte-sipping chicken-littles running around scared, somebody realized that the Al Qaeda jerk had been feeding the FBI plot lines from "Godzilla."

[Alice in Wonderland]

Yeah, just like I think Richard Reid was encouraged by, who I believe was, the first shoe bomber on November 11, 2001 (AA Flight 587).

Oh, wait ... the official line is that the plane was brought down because of seagulls ... or loose tail bolts ... or a gust of wind ... or bad French plastic ... or the nervious twitch of the pilot's foot on the rudder ... or anything but a bomb ...

Gee, I wonder whatever happened to those charred pages of the Koran that were found in the wreckage ... the ones that were turned over to law enforcement ...

[steve-b]

The informant described a detailed plan that an al Qaeda cell operating in either Virginia or Detroit had developed a way to slip past airport scanners with dirty bombs encased in shoes, suitcases, or laptops

It takes a rather large amount of radioactive material to build a significant radiological "dirty" bomb. It could be smuggled in (a farily large number) of suitcases, but an ordinary Geiger counter would easily detect it unless it were shielded to a degree that is obvious and suspicious in and of itself.

Don't even get me started on the idea that national security is being entrusted to junk science "polygraph" machines managed by people who don't know enough real science to have thought of what I just explained in the previous paragraph.

[steve-b]

There is no way someone is going to lug around cesium 137, Co60, Sr90, etc. in a shoe or briefcase for more than an hour or two. No way.

GMTA. Yes, these goobers are willing to kill themselves, but they still have to remain on their feet and functional long enough to complete their mission. You can't do that while suffering from advanced radiation poisoning.