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from Washington Post:

U.S. officials said the operatives noted that one of the buildings had three male security guards but that only one carried a weapon. “Getting up to the higher floors is not very difficult if you go there midweek, as I did,” one of the operatives added.
other snippets:
Authorities also indicated that security would be tightened at other facilities in case secondary targets were selected, including the White House, U.S. Capitol, State Department and U.S. Federal Reserve Board.
In one example of detailed surveillance cited by a senior administration intelligence official, operatives logged the flow of pedestrians outside one of the targeted buildings at midday in the middle of a week. “Fourteen persons pass by every minute” on one side of the block, they concluded.
Other communications focused on security barricades, traffic patterns, the use of sewers as escape routes and the locations of nearby fire and police stations, schools and libraries, officials said. For one building, the potential attackers discussed how visitors must sign a book telling where they are going but “on Sunday there is no security. This is not the case on Saturday.”
The operatives focused on structural features of the targets that might “prevent the buildings from toppling down,” and discussed separate plans to hijack oil tankers but warned that some contain tracking devices.
They also intensively monitored the employees of the targeted buildings, noting the locations of employee offices in relation to parking garages and identifying local bars and restaurants where employees of the institutions could be met.
“It’s as if someone long ago broke into your house and now you realize he’s been monitoring everything you did for years,” one senior U.S. official said.

All this info makes me wonder where they got this intel. It sounds as iff they're reading it "word for word" from a book or something.

and even if you catch a person doing these things - they aren't committing any crime.

“It’s as if someone long ago broke into your house and now you realize he’s been monitoring everything you did for years,” one senior U.S. official said.

This confirms that the many, many reports we've discussed on FR of suspicious observation activities by ME-types since 9/11 are REALLY going on, that they're not just some tinfoil manifestation of our collective imaginations . . .