NY Times - Vast Force Is Deployed for Security at Convention

Republicans are a bunch of sissies.

On mið, 2004-08-25 at 16:26, Lee Wells wrote:
> August 25, 2004
>
> Vast Force Is Deployed for Security at Convention
> By DAVID JOHNSTON and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
>
> he 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.
>
> Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search |
> Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top
>
>
> +
> -> post: [email protected]
> -> questions: [email protected]
> -> subscribe/unsubscribe: http://rhizome.org/preferences/subscribe.rhiz
> -> give: http://rhizome.org/support
> -> visit: on Fridays the Rhizome.org web site is open to non-members
> +
> Subscribers to Rhizome are subject to the terms set out in the
> Membership Agreement available online at http://rhizome.org/info/29.php
–
_________________________________
Pall Thayer
artist/teacher
http://www.this.is/pallit
http://130.208.220.190
http://130.208.220.190/nuharm
http://130.208.220.190/panse
—————————–