The Bush administration said Wednesday that the United States and its allies had begun a campaign to disrupt terrorist operations around the world, including the arrest of a suspected senior member of Al Qaeda in Britain. The suspected Qaeda operative was among 12 men being questioned by the British authorities after raids prompted in part by the same intelligence information that led the administration to elevate the terror threat level in the United States over the weekend, including detailed reports about buildings housing major financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington. The Qaeda member, referred to as Abu Moussa al-Hindi or Abu Eisa al-Hindi, was of intense interest to the United States, a senior American official said.
A day after senior White House officials said the decision to raise the terror alert level on Sunday had been driven in part by new intelligence beyond the information about specific buildings in the United States, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters that "there are some ongoing operations under way'' to disrupt terrorist activity.
On Wednesday night, the New York City Police Department partly lifted restrictions on trucks and vans entering Manhattan, saying the decision was made because of confidence in the new security measures within the city. In Washington, the senior official said there were "possibly" direct ties between the arrests in Britain and the threats to the buildings in the United States. The official described the arrests as "part of this web that emanates from Pakistan." |