Bush's handling of the latest terror alert would be funny if the stakes weren't so high. We are now being told that there is more information, that isn't three of four years old. This info which spurred Ridge to make Sunday's announcement, indicates an attack on NYC is planned for August or September.
One has to wonder why this hair-raising new info wasn't included in the briefings provided to law enforcement or intelligence personnel on Sunday and Monday? Or why yesterday the Administration was conceding reports that the terror alert was based on dated information?
The explanation offered is pretty bizarre in its own right. Namely that they didn't want to reveal it on monday because it could harm law enforcement and intelligence operations. Of course if that was true monday why isn't it still true today?
I have included the source quotes for this diary below.
From today's
NYT
Senior government officials said Tuesday that new intelligence pointing to a current threat of a terrorist attack on financial targets in New York and possibly in Washington - not just information about surveillance on specific buildings over the years - was a major factor in the decision over the weekend to raise the terrorism alert level.
The language used by senior administration officials on Tuesday in warning of a possible attack was at least as strong as that Mr. Ridge used in announcing the alert on Sunday, and much stronger than the language used on Monday, when the officials acknowledged that the reconnaissance reports dated back to the period surrounding the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Among other things, one official disclosed on Tuesday that one intelligence report had pointed to a possible attack "in August or September.'
Here's yesterday's Wapo
More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.
"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."
The Times did find this all rather confusing.
That shifting tone may prove frustrating to the public, providing little guidance for assessing the gravity of threat information whose details remain shrouded in intelligence reports not available to anyone outside the highest ranks of the government.
But offered us this wonderful explanation for why we couldn't be told this new information until today.
A senior White House official who mentioned the new stream of intelligence in an interview refused to say anything more about its source or content. The official said it had not been publicly disclosed out of concern that such a step could compromise intelligence and law enforcement operations in the United States and around the world. Officials would not describe those operations but said they were meant to disrupt a possible plot.