Bloomberg: NY Should Have Been Told About Nuke Fear

Reuters ^

[Asmodeus]

Mon Mar 4, 2002
Bloomberg: NY Should Have Been Told About Nuke Fear

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday New York officials should have been told about alleged fears of a nuclear attack on the city last October as reported by Time magazine.

Time magazine reported on Sunday that a month after the Sept. 11 attacks, top federal officials feared a nuclear weapon obtained from the Russian arsenal was being smuggled into New York.

The White House's Counterterrorism Security Group, part of the National Security Council, was alerted to the danger through a report by an agent code-named DRAGONFIRE, according to the magazine, but New York officials and senior FBI officials were not informed in an effort to avoid panic.

"I do believe the New York City government should have been told" of the alleged nuclear threat, Bloomberg said.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he was not notified and was "not unduly distressed that I was not."

"I don't think I could have done much with the information," Annan added. "What was important is that the authorities who have the responsibility for security did what had to be done."

The threat was later determined to be false, but the magazine said counterterrorist investigators went on their highest state of alert -- without coordinating plans with New York officials, including then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

[weegee]

"NEW YORK NUKED ! BUSH KNEW BUT DIDN"T TELL! 200,000 PRESUMED DEAD- 400,000 SICK!"

Companion headline from the Washington Post "National Health Care Needed Now More Than Ever!"

What are Clinton's survival chances at his new Harlem office versus his planned penthouse at Carnagie Hall?

[toenail]

"How sad that one's reputed mind cannot contain more than a single concept."

Life and death, hypocrisy, and moral equivalence aren't pigeon-holed themes. And my last 50 posts include comments on education, so-called "campaign finance reform," vote fraud, the War on Unpatented Drugs, Ron Paul, and enviro-wackos ("I have never ever once in my entire life been in a situation that required a carrier pigeon, and I'm glad they're all dead. Screw 'em."). Would it have bothered you at all to click on the "Find in Forum" button and simply checked before posting? Why exactly are you bitching?

[Chief]

I hope we don't see this headline. "NEW YORK NUKED ! BUSH KNEW BUT DIDN"T TELL! 200,000 PRESUMED DEAD- 400,000 SICK!

How about this headline:

"New York NOT nuked!!!! Bush Administration mistakenly warned of potential nuke attack. Hundreds of thousands die in resulting panic"

[GodBlessUSA]

Exactly, I know they were brave that day but if that warning was issued following that day, I can't imagine the panic that would have taken place

[GOPJ]

Bloomberg:if Bush had told you and New York, and nothing happened, would you yell about being scared for nothing?

Here's the deal Bloomberg: New York is a potential target. How do I know? Because you've been hit twice. Because Fox experts say it's not a question of "if," but of "when". Because we're at war with nutcases who want a high profile target. If we don't get them, they'll get us. It's not rocket science. Bad weapons exist. They'll use whatever they can get their hands on. They might get their hands on some of those bad weapons. Connect the dots...

[sheik yerbouty]

He can requisition a starship. He is Jaba. BTW Hussein Ibish could be his photodouble.

[homeschool mama]

Bingo on your post(s) ... um...you had hiccups! :o)

[gridlock]

The bridges and tunnels were closed to vehicular traffic in both directions until about 5:00 in the afternoon of 9/11. I didn't mean to imply that people were not heroic or good people did not respond appropriately that day. My point was that on 9/11 somebody opened the playbook with "Major Attack, NYC" on the cover, and near the top of the list of things to do was to isolate Manhattan.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

"We should have been told of a possible threat, regardless of whether or not the intelligence was accurate. Then 30 (or however many) days later when the threat was disproven the government could say [in their best Emily Letella voice] Never Mind......."

The irony is no one is mentioning the criticsm floating around post-9/11 which went something like : "Why scare the country with high alerts unless their was something specific to report?"

[eastsider]

I'll bring the potassium iodide mousse for desert.

[finnman69]

No sense of panic, although it was eerily quiet (except for the jet fighters). I'd expect the same if and when we get nuked.

I was riding my bike uptown on 9-11 up Sixth avenue (this is after I watched the second tower get hit, I saw victims leap to their death, and the eventual collapse of the towers)from Chelsea through the crowds and people were on the edge of panicking. I saw crowds all of a sudden start running when they thought another attack was coming. People were in a daze walking home, but I think they were close to losing it. I stopped and talked to random NYers who agreed with me, people were on the edge. This is not to denegrate my fellow NYers. It was really friggin' scary here that day and the days after. I never suffered nightmares like I had in the following days after 911 in my entire life. One more attack in the city would have done it.

Now do people panic completely and spontaneously if a warning liek that gets out. No. But is builds up gradually as people make a run on food and water, traffic out fo the city becomes impossible and looting begins. Martial law would not help the atmosphere either.

[finnman69]

What are Clinton's survival chances at his new Harlem office versus his planned penthouse at Carnagie Hall?

Depends if he is in the office. If he was at Carnegie Hall Tower and Midtown gets it, that's all she wrote Bubba when the tower gets blown down. If he is in his Harlem office with views of Midtown, he suffers third degree burns through his windows which look over Central Park and towards midtown. The he gets hit seconds later with the blast wave which blows glass all over him at 200 mph.

[eastsider]

The downtown experience was evidently non pareil. A friend who was on the 40th floor of the South Tower after the North Tower was hit got out before the second attack and never looked back. I pray for all those who witnessed what you did.

I left my midtown office after the South Tower collapsed and cut through the Park. The steady flow of people I saw from the Upper East Side was quiet but orderly. No running or pushing. But there's no way that my midtown/uptown experience can compare to downtown. (One friend who was stuck in the frozen zone because his ID was in his midtown office called me in a panic on 9/12 with a horror story about gunfire in the street -- something that I never heard confirmed in any news report.)

I heard Giuliani this morning weighing in on the question of whether we should have been told of an attack. It would have made no difference to me, but my experience was significantly different than yours. I certainly wouldn't have objected if we had been told, just as I didn't object to the high-alerts of a "possible" attack in the weeks following 9/11. But I can't see that a warning would cause any visible panic. To me, the threat of an attack is a price I pay for living in Manhattan, just as the threat of "the big one" is a price the folks on the Left Coast pay for living in LA and SF.