The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement officers that al-Qaida terrorists may be plotting to fly cargo planes from another country into crucial targets in the United States such as nuclear plants, bridges or dams, an agency official said Friday night.
A Homeland Security official said the information about the cargo planes came from a single source overseas.
“It has not yet been corroborated,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We’re in the process of trying to corroborate this information.”
“We also remain concerned about threats to the aviation industry and the use of cargo planes to carry out attacks on critical infrastructure,” the official said.
Both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI were posting an advisory Friday night alerting state and local authorities to the threat, Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said. The advisory also was being directed to officials responsible for security at such infrastructure facilities as nuclear plants, bridges and dams, he said.
Roehrkasse said the color-coded terror alert will remain at yellow, the middle level on the five-color scale indicated an elevated risk of terrorist attack. He noted that cargo companies already have security measures in place.
Critics have said the Transportation Security Administration, the agency responsible for aviation security, hadn’t done enough to make cargo planes safe. Those criticisms intensified when a New York shipping clerk packed himself in a crate and flew undetected to his parents’ home in Dallas.
Only a small percentage of cargo is checked before being shipped in cargo or passenger planes.
Neither air marshals nor armed pilots are aboard cargo planes, and areas where cargo is handled at airports are not as secure as passenger terminals.
Source: Dept. of Homeland Security