Vast Force Is Deployed for Security at Convention
The New York Police Department and the largest armada of land, air and maritime forces ever assembled to provide security at a national political gathering are being deployed in New York for the Republican convention, according to federal, state and local officials. They said yesterday that they were planning an intentionally huge response to intelligence that Al Qaeda hoped to carry out an attack to disrupt this year's elections.
The country's terror alert level, which was raised early this month, will remain at orange status, or high alert, throughout the Republican National Convention and probably well beyond, according to several senior intelligence officials. They said they were increasingly concerned about an attack, even though there was no specific intelligence indicating a strike during the convention, which begins Monday.
"Have we collected intelligence that there is going to be a hit in the financial district during the Republican National Convention?" said Pasquale J. D'Amuro, the assistant director in charge of the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "No. But intelligence we have collected indicates that Al Qaeda still desires to attack both domestically and abroad. They want to kill Americans."
With the alert level ratcheted up, even in the absence of a specific threat, thousands of Republicans arriving in New York are likely to be subjected to a new round of potentially confusing public warnings about the risk of attack alongside soothing official exhortations to enjoy the party, which will take place inside a security envelope surrounding Madison Square Garden.
"Attacking Madison Square Garden would be like pulling a bank job at Fort Knox," a senior counterterrorism official said, referring to the security measures being put into place this week. "It will be the hardest target in the world."
Officials from the National Security Council quietly visited New York last week for briefings with the local authorities. Today, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge will inspect arrangements for the convention.
The backbone of security is being provided by the 37,000-member New York Police Department, which has a budget larger than all but 19 of the world's standing armies. To prevent an attack, the department will flood the streets with officers and employ high and low technology, from seven surveillance helicopters to plainclothes detectives traveling the subways and eyeballing other riders.
Up to 10,000 officers, many reassigned from narcotics and other duties, will be part of an enormous show of force around Madison Square Garden. That display will include special heavily armed "Hercules" antiterror squads, snipers and phalanxes of officers set up around the arena to search buses and trucks before they enter the area. In addition to the helicopters, several of which can feed close-up video surveillance images to mobile command centers on the ground, 26 launches will patrol waterways, and officers will use 181 bomb-sniffing dogs, many of them borrowed from other law enforcement agencies.
"We can cover all the bases with 37,000 police officers," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday. "As big as the R.N.C. deployment is, we have a reserve on top of that. New York would be a poor choice for the malicious-minded to try anything, especially now."
Mr. Kelly has said that virtually the entire department will be mobilized next week, when in addition to the convention, the department will police the United States Open tennis tournament, and baseball games at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and Shea Stadium in Queens.
Not counting the costs incurred by federal agencies, security in New York is estimated at about $60 million, out of a convention budget of about $166 million, as concerns have broadened to cover not only the week of the convention, but also the weeks before and after it. Police are girding for protests, including a planned march on Sunday, which organizers have predicted will attract as many as 250,000 people, and more spontaneous demonstrations.
The Secret Service is coordinating security arrangements, but more than two dozen federal, state and local agencies will contribute personnel and equipment. Those agencies include the Long Island Rail Road, the Postal Service and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, which will help monitor the airspace over New York.
The Department of Homeland Security will contribute bicycle and motorcycle officers, helicopters crews, explosives-detecting dog teams, undercover agents, mobile communications experts, hazardous materials teams, intelligence analysts and Coast Guard teams trained in boarding suspicious watercraft. The federal government's costs will run in the millions, most of it from money allocated for special events.
Five officials who had been briefed on the latest intelligence analysis discussed the overall threat level as Republicans prepared to arrive in New York and as intelligence analysts searching for clues to Al Qaeda's intentions pored over computer materials seized during recent arrests in Britain and Pakistan. American officials have said since early July that they have received intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda hoped to carry out an attack to disrupt the elections.
The officials said that an investigation of eight men charged with terrorism-related offenses in Britain had provided a clearer picture of the surveillance operations at five American financial institutions. The authorities now believe the surveillance was carried out by Issa al-Hindi. They said he traveled to the United States along with two confederates, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Quaisar Shaffi, who were arrested on Aug. 3 by the British authorities. Investigators have concluded that they stayed in Manhattan hotels during the surveillance.
The American authorities are compiling timelines that show Mr. Hindi traveled to the United States in 2000 and 2001 at the same time as Mr. Tarmohammed and Mr. Shaffi. The authorities are continuing to investigate whether other people helped the reconnaissance missions. They could include Adnan G. el-Shukrijumah, an associate of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief architect of the Sept. 11 attacks who was captured last year and is being held in an undisclosed location.
Mr. Kelly said that F.B.I. agents, police detectives and other investigators on the Joint Terrorist Task Force were working to learn where Mr. Hindi was, whom he was with and what he was doing during his time in New York City.
"Obviously what al-Hindi did in the U.S. and who he did it with is of concern," Mr. Kelly said. "So there is this examination of his whereabouts and his contacts in this county. That's ongoing."
Among the thousands of computer discs and other materials seized during the British arrests are bank account records, telephone numbers and credit cards that appear to have been used in the United States. That suggests that the surveillance group may have closer ties to the United States than was previously understood. So far, links to people in the United States are not clearly understood, but no one in the United States has been arrested, the officials said.
Investigators appear to be divided on the overall purpose of the surveillance group, which conducted detailed vulnerability studies of financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington. There is little information in the voluminous cache of documents to suggest that the group had gone beyond the surveillance missions to starting preparations to carry out a plot, according to some officials.
But others investigators believe that impression may change. They said Mr. Hindi appeared to have spent time in the spring updating the three- and four-year-old surveillance reports on the financial institutions, possibly preparing to launch a plot against them. In addition, the officials said, there have been recent reports that Mr. Hindi may have studied improvised explosives in the spring in Pakistan.
DAVID JOHNSTON and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: August 25, 2004
NY Times
The country's terror alert level, which was raised early this month, will remain at orange status, or high alert, throughout the Republican National Convention and probably well beyond, according to several senior intelligence officials. They said they were increasingly concerned about an attack, even though there was no specific intelligence indicating a strike during the convention, which begins Monday.
"Have we collected intelligence that there is going to be a hit in the financial district during the Republican National Convention?" said Pasquale J. D'Amuro, the assistant director in charge of the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "No. But intelligence we have collected indicates that Al Qaeda still desires to attack both domestically and abroad. They want to kill Americans."
With the alert level ratcheted up, even in the absence of a specific threat, thousands of Republicans arriving in New York are likely to be subjected to a new round of potentially confusing public warnings about the risk of attack alongside soothing official exhortations to enjoy the party, which will take place inside a security envelope surrounding Madison Square Garden.
"Attacking Madison Square Garden would be like pulling a bank job at Fort Knox," a senior counterterrorism official said, referring to the security measures being put into place this week. "It will be the hardest target in the world."
Officials from the National Security Council quietly visited New York last week for briefings with the local authorities. Today, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge will inspect arrangements for the convention.
The backbone of security is being provided by the 37,000-member New York Police Department, which has a budget larger than all but 19 of the world's standing armies. To prevent an attack, the department will flood the streets with officers and employ high and low technology, from seven surveillance helicopters to plainclothes detectives traveling the subways and eyeballing other riders.
Up to 10,000 officers, many reassigned from narcotics and other duties, will be part of an enormous show of force around Madison Square Garden. That display will include special heavily armed "Hercules" antiterror squads, snipers and phalanxes of officers set up around the arena to search buses and trucks before they enter the area. In addition to the helicopters, several of which can feed close-up video surveillance images to mobile command centers on the ground, 26 launches will patrol waterways, and officers will use 181 bomb-sniffing dogs, many of them borrowed from other law enforcement agencies.
"We can cover all the bases with 37,000 police officers," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday. "As big as the R.N.C. deployment is, we have a reserve on top of that. New York would be a poor choice for the malicious-minded to try anything, especially now."
Mr. Kelly has said that virtually the entire department will be mobilized next week, when in addition to the convention, the department will police the United States Open tennis tournament, and baseball games at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and Shea Stadium in Queens.
Not counting the costs incurred by federal agencies, security in New York is estimated at about $60 million, out of a convention budget of about $166 million, as concerns have broadened to cover not only the week of the convention, but also the weeks before and after it. Police are girding for protests, including a planned march on Sunday, which organizers have predicted will attract as many as 250,000 people, and more spontaneous demonstrations.
The Secret Service is coordinating security arrangements, but more than two dozen federal, state and local agencies will contribute personnel and equipment. Those agencies include the Long Island Rail Road, the Postal Service and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, which will help monitor the airspace over New York.
The Department of Homeland Security will contribute bicycle and motorcycle officers, helicopters crews, explosives-detecting dog teams, undercover agents, mobile communications experts, hazardous materials teams, intelligence analysts and Coast Guard teams trained in boarding suspicious watercraft. The federal government's costs will run in the millions, most of it from money allocated for special events.
Five officials who had been briefed on the latest intelligence analysis discussed the overall threat level as Republicans prepared to arrive in New York and as intelligence analysts searching for clues to Al Qaeda's intentions pored over computer materials seized during recent arrests in Britain and Pakistan. American officials have said since early July that they have received intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda hoped to carry out an attack to disrupt the elections.
The officials said that an investigation of eight men charged with terrorism-related offenses in Britain had provided a clearer picture of the surveillance operations at five American financial institutions. The authorities now believe the surveillance was carried out by Issa al-Hindi. They said he traveled to the United States along with two confederates, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Quaisar Shaffi, who were arrested on Aug. 3 by the British authorities. Investigators have concluded that they stayed in Manhattan hotels during the surveillance.
The American authorities are compiling timelines that show Mr. Hindi traveled to the United States in 2000 and 2001 at the same time as Mr. Tarmohammed and Mr. Shaffi. The authorities are continuing to investigate whether other people helped the reconnaissance missions. They could include Adnan G. el-Shukrijumah, an associate of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief architect of the Sept. 11 attacks who was captured last year and is being held in an undisclosed location.
Mr. Kelly said that F.B.I. agents, police detectives and other investigators on the Joint Terrorist Task Force were working to learn where Mr. Hindi was, whom he was with and what he was doing during his time in New York City.
"Obviously what al-Hindi did in the U.S. and who he did it with is of concern," Mr. Kelly said. "So there is this examination of his whereabouts and his contacts in this county. That's ongoing."
Among the thousands of computer discs and other materials seized during the British arrests are bank account records, telephone numbers and credit cards that appear to have been used in the United States. That suggests that the surveillance group may have closer ties to the United States than was previously understood. So far, links to people in the United States are not clearly understood, but no one in the United States has been arrested, the officials said.
Investigators appear to be divided on the overall purpose of the surveillance group, which conducted detailed vulnerability studies of financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington. There is little information in the voluminous cache of documents to suggest that the group had gone beyond the surveillance missions to starting preparations to carry out a plot, according to some officials.
But others investigators believe that impression may change. They said Mr. Hindi appeared to have spent time in the spring updating the three- and four-year-old surveillance reports on the financial institutions, possibly preparing to launch a plot against them. In addition, the officials said, there have been recent reports that Mr. Hindi may have studied improvised explosives in the spring in Pakistan.
DAVID JOHNSTON and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
Published: August 25, 2004
NY Times
posted by R7 | 8/25/2004 09:21:00 AM
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