Live Missiles Moved To Launch Sites Around Washington
by Dan Eggen and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post
The Bush administration yesterday elevated the nationwide terrorist threat index for the first time, warning of a “high risk” that al Qaeda cells in Southeast Asia and suicide bombers in the Middle East would launch attacks to coincide with today’s anniversary of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.
The heightened alert, approved yesterday by President Bush, came as the Pentagon moved live anti-aircraft missiles to launchers deployed around Washington for the first time in four decades. The Pentagon said the deployment was “not a response to any specific threat, but is a prudent precaution to increase the radar and air defense posture in the national capital region,” which is being constantly patrolled by fighter jets.
The elevated alert prompted the State Department to shutter more than a dozen embassies and consulates, including the embassies in Pakistan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Bahrain and diplomatic missions in Malaysia, Cambodia, the United Arab Emirates, Tajikistan and Malawi.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other U.S. officials warned that the volume and type of intelligence reports received in recent weeks was eerily similar to the climate last summer, when authorities had evidence of an imminent attack but no inkling the strikes would come on U.S. soil.
The new warning -- based primarily on information gleaned within the previous 24 hours from an al Qaeda operative who is in custody -- revived the jittery atmosphere that prevailed after last fall’s attacks, which killed more than 3,000 people in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
As the nation prepared to commemorate those events, Vice President Cheney, who had emerged from protective hiding in February, canceled a Tuesday night speech and was again taken to an undisclosed location. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Cheney had also spent Monday night in a secret spot, and his schedule for today was undecided.
Today’s schedule for President Bush, including appearances at the Pentagon, New York’s Ground Zero and the Shanksville, Pa., field where Flight 93 went down, would remain unchanged, Fleischer said.
“We take every threat seriously,” Bush told reporters at the Afghan Embassy in Washington. “The threats that we have heard recently remind us of the pattern of threats that we heard prior to September the 11th. We have no specific threat to America, but we’re taking everything seriously, obviously.”
A Kuwaiti extradited from Indonesia earlier this year gave U.S. officials information about a plot that led to the threat warning and the embassy closings, sources said.
The man was identified as Omar al-Farouq, an al Qaeda “money man” and the link between a regional terrorist network and al Qaeda, sources said. The information he yielded was crucial but not the only element in the decision to issue the warning.
Al-Farouq, who was first named by the New York Times, was picked up in West Java in June and almost immediately turned over to U.S. officials, sources said.
“He said, ‘Why don’t you look here or there. They did and uncovered some worms, not just al Qaeda but indications that there was a stronger network here than people had led them to believe,’ ” the source said.
“Most of the information seemed to be pushing in the direction of a regional network.”
The information led to a “specific and credible” security threat against official U.S. facilities, but not U.S. citizens or business interests.
Three years ago, al Qaeda officials sent al-Farouq to Indonesia, and he spent part of the time in the troubled areas of Ambon and Poso, where Indonesian authorities suspect he played a role in support of Islamic militants involved in ongoing violence with local Christians. Indonesian intelligence officials said al-Farouq may have provided weapons, ammunition and financial support to the local Islamic extremists.
Officials also said they had learned that al Qaeda terror cells in that region had been stockpiling explosives since January in preparation for attacks.
Ashcroft, joined at a Justice Department news conference by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, announced the change in the color-coded system from “yellow” -- which signifies an elevated risk of attack -- to “orange,” which represents a high risk.
The only higher level is “red,” which indicates an imminent or ongoing attack. The country had been on yellow alert since the five-tier warning system was unveiled in March.
“As we have been forced to do in the past, today we once again call on the American people to remain alert but defiant in the face of this new threat,” Ashcroft said.
Ashcroft said information from “a senior al Qaeda operative” and other sources indicate possible attacks to coincide with Sept. 11. In addition to possible attacks in South Asia, Ashcroft said that other intelligence information indicates that Middle Eastern terrorists might be plotting suicide attacks against U.S. facilities. Officials also fear that some of the thousands of low-level al Qaeda operatives who were trained in Afghanistan terror camps may seek to launch freelance attacks around the time of today’s anniversary.
Another U.S. official said the operative “is naming names of people who want to do this.”
“He is just beginning to sing,” a senior government official said of the Kuwaiti who trained in Afghanistan with al Qaeda.
One White House official said the most specific threat information came in Monday and began “creeping up the ladder” of the West Wing until top-level officials were informed during a 6 p.m. concert taping at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Bush was told about the threat when he returned to the White House after the taping, and was provided more details yesterday morning. At about 9 a.m., his advisers formally recommended elevating the threat level. “Let’s do it,” Bush said, according to the official.
The most likely terror targets would be “symbols of American power and authority” such as embassies, military facilities and national monuments, Ashcroft said. Authorities were not recommending cancellation of any Sept. 11 events, however, and federal employees are expected to report to work as usual, officials said.
“We’ll do everything we can to protect the American people,” Bush said. “And Americans need to go about their lives. They just need to know that their government, at the federal and state and local level, will be on an extra level of alert to protect us.”
Ridge held a series of conference calls yesterday with governors, state homeland security directors, mayors and business leaders. Many already had prepared response plans based on the threat system Ridge unveiled in March, and Ridge told them that they should follow those.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered the nation’s 103 nuclear power plants to heighten security, while the Energy Department ordered precautions at nuclear weapons facilities, research laboratories and other sites. Transportation officials said they would, starting today, restrict blimps, news helicopters and other small aircraft over major sporting events indefinitely.
The Association of Oil Pipe Lines and the American Petroleum Institute contacted companies to urge tighter restrictions on access to facilities and other protective measures.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered the use of live missiles in the Washington-area launchers “as a prudent precaution,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
The launchers had originally been intended for a training exercise, and the conversion to live ammunition recalled the the 1960s and 1970s, when Nike guided-missile sites ringed Washington and other U.S. cities. Last Friday, jet fighters resumed 24-hour patrols over New York and Washington.
At the headquarters of the U.S. 5th Fleet in Bahrain, where about 4,000 sailors and other troops are based, the level was increased to “delta” -- the highest protective condition in the military. U.S. forces elsewhere in the Persian Gulf region remained on the heightened but lower status of “charlie,” officials said.
U.S. Navy officials in Bahrain also issued a warning to shippers that al Qaeda might be planning attacks on oil tankers. Ashcroft listed the “transportation and energy sectors” as likely targets.
The State Department late Monday issued a worldwide alert urging Americans to be vigilant during the period surrounding the anniversary. It also ordered more than a dozen embassies and consulates closed yesterday.
In many cases, the embassies are reviewing whether security precautions need to be upgraded, said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher.
Boucher said of potential attacks, “Some could be imminent, some could be suicide operations, some could be against U.S. government facilities or other identifiably American facilities, but even American citizens could be subject to kidnapping or other acts of violence because of this.”
In Jakarta, U.S. Ambassador Ralph Boyce, who announced the closure of the embassy there, told reporters that “there are al Qaeda cells in the region,” but their exact nature remains “murky.” Embassy officials here and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, warned Americans to be “extremely cautious” in the coming days.
In both cities, the police provided increased security for embassy buildings.
The U.S. Embassy in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country with 220 million people, was closed in October 2000 and after the Sept. 11 attacks, both times due to “credible and specific” security threats. In Malaysia, a mostly Muslim country of 23 million people, the U.S. embassy was closed in 1998 after the attacks on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
In the Philippines, authorities tightened security at embassies, airports, power plants and telecommunications facilities after a man suspected of having links to al Qaeda reportedly revealed a plot to carry out attacks.