The
Office of Special Plans (OFS) was instigated by Don Rumsfeld at the beginning of the Bush Administration. It's role was essentially to fabricate and disseminate dissinformation to further the United States goals in the the world. Yeah... scary stuff.
Anyway, I have no doubt, as evidenced by the recent story about US school data found on a hard drive in Baghdad, that the OFS is alive and well and behind the Bush administration's latest misuse of government and abuse of public trust to scare the American people and advance is electoral agenda.
Consider these two articles, one published yesterday at abcnews.com, the second found today, one CNN's front-page:
School Warning
School Plans, Security Information Gathered by Suspected Iraq Insurgent Focus Concern on Schools in Six States
By Brian Ross
Oct. 7, 2004 -- Schools in six states in particular are being watched closely based on information uncovered by the U.S. military in Baghdad this summer, law enforcement and education officials told ABC News.
A man described as an Iraqi insurgent involved in anti-coalition activities had downloaded school floor plans and safety and security information about elementary and high schools in the six states, according to officials.
School officials in Fort Myers, Fla.; Salem, Ore.; Gray, Ga.; Birch Run, Mich.; two towns in New Jersey; and two towns in California have been told to increase security in light of the discovery.
Law enforcement officials say information on both elementary schools and high schools was included on the insurgent's disc, and that some of the schools involved were under construction this summer.
The ongoing construction was of particular interest to law enforcement officials. The terrorists who attacked the school in Beslan, Russia -- where nearly 340 people were killed, many of them children -- are thought to have hidden weapons in that school while it was under construction this summer.
<SNIP>
On Wednesday, the federal government warned schools nationwide to look out for suspicious activity that might signal terrorist activity, and told school officials to be on the lookout for anyone spying on their buildings or buses, expressing interest in obtaining site plans, and other types of suspicious activity.
The warning followed an analysis by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department of the last month's school siege in Beslan.
Law enforcement officials said they had no easy explanation why an insurgent in Baghdad would be gathering such specific information about American schools, some of them in small towns.
And though the information was recovered in July, it was not given urgency until the attack in Beslan.
Ultimately, officials say they are hoping to increase security in schools and heighten awareness without causing parents nationwide to panic.
Here's the second article... compare and contrast:
Disks found in Iraq show info on U.S. schools
Friday, October 8, 2004 Posted: 11:29 AM EDT (1529 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. military in Iraq has discovered two computer disks containing photographs, layouts and other material pertaining to American schools in six states, U.S. government officials said.
The FBI is examining the materials, but a Department of Homeland Security official said the intelligence community determined there was no threat.
The military retrieved the disks in Iraq within the last couple of months, and they were turned over to the FBI, one official said Thursday.
"There is no threat associated with this," another government official said.
The schools are in Fort Myers, Florida; Salem, Oregon; Jones County, Georgia; New Jersey; Michigan; and California.
The Department of Homeland Security official said the material was associated with a person in Iraq, and it could not be established that this person had any ties to terrorism. He did have a connection to civic groups doing planning for schools in Iraq, the official said.
Officials said that they are taking the matter seriously though there has been no specific threat related to the recovered material.
The U.S. schools were notified in the last few weeks so they would be aware and could take any action they deemed necessary.
"State and local law enforcement personnel have informed us of the need to increase our school security during this election season," said Jones County School Superintendent William Mathews Jr. in a letter sent last month to parents of students in the Middle Georgia community.
"It is important to know that no threat of any type has been directed or is suspected against any Jones County school."
The FBI sent an advisory to terrorism task forces across the nation to inform them about the material, a Department of Homeland Security official said. No public notification or other action associated with a heightened state of alert was taken, the official said, because it did not seem necessary to "elevate it to that level based on the assessment of the intelligence community."
U.S. officials said they don't know how to explain why such material would be found on computer disks in Iraq. They said the information recovered is publicly available through the Internet or other means.
The Department of Homeland Security official said the information included a Department of Education guide on how to plan for a crisis in schools. A senior government official said there is no indication anyone was on the ground casing the schools.
One official said the retrieved information is "all of relatively recent vintage."
Authorities said this information is not related to a bulletin that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued Wednesday to schools and law enforcement about school safety in the wake of the Beslan, Russia, massacre.
A senior official said analysts are going over the information and are examining all possible scenarios. As the official put it, schools have been mentioned as possible terror targets in previous intercepted conversations between alleged operatives and in interrogations of detainees, but nothing has emerged recently.
"There is no analysis by the intelligence community that the Iraqi information or Beslan information or any other information indicates there is any plot to attack a school in the United States," said Brian Roehrkasse, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman.
CNN's Kelli Arena, Kevin Bohn and Jeanne Meserve contributed to this report.
Anyone who believes that the OFS is not alive and well, and manipulating the truth for political purposes in either blind or criminally stupid.
And the media is still playing along... they just won't learn.
This story is fucking huge... where is the media?