Employees take security steps in stride
Alerts are reportedly based on old data
WASHINGTON -- Police wearing body armor and wielding assault rifles stood guard outside the New York Stock Exchange and patrolled Washington subway stations near key financial institutions yesterday, the result of a heightened terror alert issued Sunday for specific targets.
In Manhattan and Newark, employees of
The unusual security was prompted by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announcing Sunday that the government had recently obtained information that Al Qaeda operatives were surveilling financial buildings in preparation for an attack.
But much of the information the Bush administration relied on to elevate the terror threat level to "high" in the three cities is three or four years old, and intelligence officials did not have any information that surveillance of the buildings was still underway, The New York Times and
The newspapers quoted many unidentified intelligence and law enforcement officials as saying the increased security was justified because Al Qaeda is capable of planning for years before striking. Others, however, were less certain.
"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," a senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert told the Post. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."
A computer file with information on one building may have been updated as recently as January, a senior intelligence official told the Post.
Employees said yesterday that they felt well protected and appreciated the added security.
"I have confidence in the security here given that after 9/11 the government wouldn't take any risks," said Christine Walsh, as she approached the World Bank headquarters near the White House. "I also have confidence in the World Bank. They are in countries all over the world and have experience dealing with terrorists."
But elsewhere across America, for the first time during a federal orange alert, life continued under yellow-alert status, just as it did before Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced Sunday that intelligence officials had found evidence of Al Qaeda plans to bomb certain financial buildings and that the government was raising the terrorism-risk status at those sites to "high."
Other police departments around the country maintained their usual level of vigilance, rather than add costly overtime patrols as they had done under previous orange alerts that covered the whole nation.
James Carafano, a homeland security specialist at the Heritage Foundation, said Ridge's decision to raise the alert only for those specific financial institutions showed that the two-year-old alert system is improving, sparing unnecessary anxiety in areas not identified as terror risks.
"The problem of the homeland security advisory system as originally devised was that it was a blunt instrument: You'd turn the whole nation on, and then you'd turn the whole nation off again," he said. "It was fiscally not very responsible to be ramping up security everywhere, including where we didn't need to."
Many homeland security specialists expressed hope that targeted warnings will become the normal way of alerting the public to terrorist threats. But David Heyman, director of the homeland security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, cautioned that might be difficult.
Senior intelligence officials, briefing reporters Sunday about the "treasure trove" of documents, surveillance reports, sketches, and other materials seized on computer disks taken from Al Qaeda members during recent raids in Pakistan, described the quality of information about the network's plans as unique.
One official said it was more precise than any he had seen during his 24-year career in intelligence. Multiple media outlets have since reported that much of the information is connected to the recent arrest in Pakistan of an Al Qaeda computer specialist named Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan.
"What they usually have had over the last five code oranges has been increased chatter, a generalized threat, perhaps some intelligence about a particular sector or type of attack, but very much just general information," Heyman said. "If it took us three years [since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001] to get this type of intelligence, it may take us another three years before we get this level of specificity again."
He also contended that the new intelligence provided information only about the vulnerabilities of particular targets, so "the real challenge for the government now will be to determine when the threat of a possible attack has passed."
A Homeland Security spokeswoman, Katy Mynster, said the department hopes to continue its use of targeted alerts.
"I don't know that we'll be able to do this every time -- obviously, I can't say for sure," she said. "But it's an opportunity we will continue to look for in the future."
Outside the World Bank yesterday, Walsh, who was going to work, said she had called a hot line after the orange-alert announcement and was told the building would have increased security, with extra guards and Secret Service protection. She said she had confidence in the security.
"I don't think this is a hoax," Walsh said, as two police officers and two security guards stood nearby checking people's identification.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg rang the opening bell at the stock exchange, blocks from where the World Trade Center towers once stood, then joined Governor George Pataki in breaking ground on a new
"New York City is not going to be cowed by terrorists, make no mistake about it," Bloomberg said in a nationally televised news conference.
And in Newark, police erected barricades around the Prudential headquarters to protect against potential truck bombs.
Some of the response was spreading past the parameters of the warning Ridge issued. Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, announced yesterday that Capitol Police were establishing temporary security checkpoints on all streets leading to the Capitol complex and would close a street between two Senate office buildings. 