Al Qaida Threat to Rent Control? Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Peter Bell [Fresh from their latest PR disaster over Cuba and the Carter trip, the Bushies are now coping badly with rumblings of extreme national discontent over Georgie's remarkable lack of attention to terrorism warnings prior to September 11. Laura Bush has been dispatched to defend her man during her first solo trip to Europe, and Colin Powell is snappily telling folks in London to stop bashing Uncle Sam. Now tame Joe Lieberman is taking time out from cozying up to Cuban-American gusanos to threaten the White House with a subpoena if they don't fork over information on their Enron contacts. A new threat is needed to distract the throngs, and just in time, on the Reuters feed, we have the FBI reporting that they have intelligence of unknown reliability that Al Qaida cells may soon be renting apartments to pack with explosives. After the NY Times ran copy from various US terrorist-hunters warning of "heavy chatter" intercepted similar to last summer's vague warnings, Reuters revised the story to include more than simply apartment buildings. The Times article reports on claims from the US administration that something "spectacular" may be planned, something as big or even bigger than 911. The apartment building stuff worked so well for Putin, maybe he faxed Bolton the details of how it'd been arranged at his end for inclusion in the NSA "threat matrix" as "nonspecific" and "uncorroborated" plans. Memorial Day and Fourth of July are both coming right up, and Memorial Day is probably the closest parallel to the holiday commemorating the Soviet victory over Germany. (Word is this year, the Memorial Day poppies will come straight from our new friends in Kabul.) The color code for threats to residential real estate wasn't mentioned, but this warning will probably tighten the housing market for Muslims in the USA.] Reuters via The New York Times - May 18, 2002 http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack-threat.html U.S. Detects 'Enhanced' Threat of a New Attack By REUTERS Filed at 8:36 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence officials have detected "enhanced activity" that points to a potential new attack against the United States or American interests abroad, a White House official said on Saturday. The FBI also warned of a possible plot by Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network to detonate bombs in apartment buildings in the United States. The comments came as The New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence agencies have intercepted a series of messages among al Qaeda operatives indicating the group is attempting to launch an attack as big as or bigger than the one on Sept. 11. Quoting unidentified intelligence and law enforcement officials, the Times characterized the communications as vague but disturbing. The intercepted messages are so general that they have left President Bush and U.S. counterterrorism officials uncertain about the timing, location or method in this potential attack, the Times reported. "There has been information of concern, enhanced activity of concern," the White House official, who asked not to be quoted by name, told Reuters. The information has been detected in recent weeks and months, the official said. "Certainly we are always concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack. The president and senior administration officials and the vice president, just a couple of days ago, have told the country that there always exists the possibility of a terrorist attack against the country, and the country's interests. We as American citizens want to be vigilant, but also live our lives." Separately, the FBI has received information that al Qaeda operatives are "considering renting apartments in unspecified areas of the United States and then planting explosives," said bureau spokeswoman Debbie Weierman. The information was "nonspecific" and "uncorroborated," she said. During the last few days, the FBI has passed the potential threat on to its field offices around the country as well as to local officials and managers and owners of apartment buildings, Weierman said. The FBI has issued no official alerts, and put out the notices "only in an abundance of caution," but there was "no reason to believe (the threat) has gone past the discussion phase," she added. CREDIBLE INTELLIGENCE Officials cited by the Times said the intercepted messages represent some of the most credible intelligence gathered on al Qaeda's plans since the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington involving hijacked commercial airliners. U.S. intelligence agencies have gathered reports of potential threats to U.S. interests by al Qaeda continuously since Sept. 11 and are still worried about another attack, an intelligence official who requested anonymity told Reuters. "We remain concerned that there could be an attack. They have not gone away," the official said, adding that the reports are "the same unspecific, generalized concern" that had arisen in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks. "There is no reason to think terrorism has gone away, there is threat reporting every day, we get new stuff every day," the official said. Asked whether the level of al Qaeda threat reports being picked up by intelligence agencies was similar to that in the months before Sept. 11, the intelligence official said it was "in the neighborhood." The officials cited by the Times compared the messages with the pattern of communications picked up in the spring and early summer of 2001, when al Qaeda operatives were detected speaking about a major operation. "There's just a lot of chatter in the system again," a senior administration official told the Times. "We are actively pursuing it and trying to see what's going on here." One senior official said the volume of intelligence relating to a potential future attack -- in Europe, the Arabian Peninsula or the United States -- has increased in the past month, the report said. The Times said messages referring to mass casualties do not specifically mention the use of weapons of mass destruction such as chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Bush has faced criticism in recent days over disclosures that a series of possible clues about al Qaeda's plans went unheeded in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks. The Republican president on Friday hit back at Democratic "second-guessing" of his handling of intelligence ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks, adding: "Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people." Vice President Dick Cheney cautioned on Thursday that "without a doubt a very real threat of another perhaps more devastating attack still exists." ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytnyc-05.19.02-06:14:49-22579