Links ARCHIVE: MSNBC - Recent Terror Alert With Old Data

Officials Admit some of the data is years old

Published on August 3, 2004 By joetheblow In Blogging

With one blog posted just hours ago here, not what I find is that some of the data used is old. Now that might not be as bad as it might sound. Sometimes something that was done in the past might have made it to the table of someone making some decisions. Ad it to current data and you have something to worry about. Ergo, terror alert raised.

You know what is so funny about all of this? More people die from car accidents, drugs, and just regular crimes then in terrorist attacks. The part 'terrorism' is what makes it something to pay attention to? Terror must be something that is very bad because we are focusing billions of dollars to thrash it.

Officials had said earlier that it was not clear whether the people who amassed the information, principally on financial institutions in New York, Newark, N.J., and Washington, were still in the country or plotting.

Well, anyway, here is a piece of the article:

SOURCE: MSNBC
Ridge defends higher terror alert as ‘essential’
Homeland security chief reacts to news al-Qaida files are years old

The Associated Press
Updated: 7:48 p.m. ET Aug. 3, 2004

WASHINGTON - Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Tuesday that the government decided “it was essential” to raise the terrorism alert even though U.S. officials acknowledged that the detailed surveillance photos and documents that prompted the warnings dated from as far back as 2000 and 2001.

Ridge said at a news conference in New York that because of the heightened security steps, “we have made it much more difficult for the terrorists to achieve their broad objectives. ... We will not become fortress America.”

Officials had said earlier that it was not clear whether the people who amassed the information, principally on financial institutions in New York, Newark, N.J., and Washington, were still in the country or plotting.

Top administration officials said some of the surveillance apparently was updated as recently as January. They denied allegations that the public release of the information now, with the raising of the terror alert, was politically motivated. They said the information was released now because it was just uncovered in Pakistan.

“We don’t do politics in the Department of Homeland Security,” Ridge said. “Our job is to identify the threat.”

The surveillance actions taken by the plotters were “originally done between 2000 and 2001 but were updated — some were updated — as recently as January of this year,” Fran Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show.

“And from what we know of al-Qaida’s method ... they do them years in advance and then update them before they actually launch the attack,” she said.

Democrats cry foul
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that once federal officials got such information, “they do have a responsibility not only to evaluate it, but to get it out.” But city officials in Washington blasted the closing of a Capitol Hill street running between two Senate office buildings.

“This was a sneak attack on the District of Columbia based on old information,” D.C. Council member Sharon Ambrose said.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer called it a necessary inconvenience that was likely to be in place until the Nov. 2 elections.

“The timing was right, right now, and while it is inconvenient, it’s pre-catastrophe. It’s the type of thing we should’ve been thinking about before 9/11,” Gainer said on local radio. “A threat in one part of the city is a threat to all of the city. And we know the terrorists have been trying to get the Capitol. “

White House press secretary Scott McClellan, who was traveling with President Bush on Air Force One...

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