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Ridge says holiday security alert averted terrorist attack
My guess would be that heâs dead-on here and that same is likely true with all of the flight cancellations during the Eid al-Ahda. That gives us a window to kill or capture all the bad guys before they come back around to take a second wing at us.Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said yesterday that he believes security crackdowns over the Christmas holidays, including the cancellation of some passenger flights into the United States, averted a terrorist attack. But intelligence on the threat was so wispy that U.S. officials may never know for sure, he said. The volume of threat information from many separate sources, some mentioning the same cities and the same international flights, was alarming and unprecedented, Ridge said. It led to the raising of the national threat alert level to orange, or "high risk," on Dec. 21. The index was lowered three weeks later. "It was very unusual," he said. "My gut tells me we did" avert an al Qaeda operation during that time, he told reporters yesterday. After checking the passenger lists for a number of U.S.-bound flights over the holidays, French and British officials said they doubted that any passenger intended to hijack a jet. But U.S. officials said that perhaps some terrorists did not show up for the flights or aborted their plans. "Their assessment of some of the information was different from ours," Ridge said. Although he said Washington, Paris and London communicated well during the holiday alert, there also were "uncomfortable" moments. Ridge said he took responsibility for some of them because, about Dec. 20, with time running out amid fears over some Paris-to-New York flights, he called Air France officials to insist they take some security precautions without informing French officials. "I created the tension over the holidays," he said. He also acknowledged that his call several days later for foreign airlines entering U.S. airspace to deploy armed air marshals annoyed some foreign governments. U.S. officials are asking foreign airlines to send detailed data about passengers -- such as passport numbers -- to Washington when flights are booked, rather than when travelers arrive at the airport. Late-arriving information often causes U.S.-bound flights to be held on the ground pending checks, he said. Concerned that the public is becoming jaded about the threat warnings, Ridge repeated his desire to go to orange alert only in the most dire cases. Recalling one four-month period last year when three orange alerts were raised, he said "that horrible period" left Americans "anxious and angry." Overall, Ridge said, the entire business of canceling flights or basing national security options on vaporous intelligence is a guessing game, at best. "I canât emphasize enough the incompleteness of the intelligence," he said. "You get bits and pieces. . . . Itâs the toughest job in any war." Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-02-05 |
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