A threat too real to be ignored

[BEER980]

Here is a little insite into the last few days of terrorist warnings.

A threat too real to be ignored

GETHIN CHAMBERLAIN DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT


THE decision to cancel flight BA223 from Heathrow to Washington DC was made, according to security sources, on the basis of a genuine and specific threat that could not be ignored.

Informed that persons unknown intended to take over the flight and crash it in the capital of the United States, the security services had little choice but to intervene.

The problem they face, however, is that is it impossible to know now whether they did indeed avert a catastrophe, or whether the information they received was a hoax, or simply wrong.

When they get it right, no-one notices. When they get it wrong, they risk becoming a laughing stock. Six Air France flights were cancelled last week because of the suspected presence of "terrorists" who turned out to be a Welsh insurance agent, a five-year-old child, an elderly Chinese woman and three French nationals who, despite the fractious relationship between their country and the US, posed no obvious threat to international security.

But intelligence services are in a difficult position. Inept and impotent before the attacks of 11 September, 2001, and under intense pressure over the weapons of mass destruction fiasco in Iraq, they cannot afford another high profile foul-up. At the same time, they cannot simply stop every flight.

For the moment at least, they appear to have the confidence of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic. Yesterday the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, acknowledged that there would be false alarms.

"It’s a period of tension and a period of risk," he said. "I prefer the principle of precaution."

Airlines and airport operators are in a similarly invidious position. Contacted with specific warnings about possible attacks, they have preferred to err on the side of caution.

BA had already started checking passengers on to Flight BA223 yesterday when the company announced at 1:15pm that it had been cancelled for security reasons, less than two hours before its 3:05pm scheduled take-off.

BAA, which operates Heathrow Airport, yesterday initially pointed to a warning about the flight number as the reason for cancelling flight BA223 - the second cancellation of a transatlantic flight in two days. A spokeswoman said: "It is that particular flight that there are issues with, not the passengers." She later retracted her statement and claimed that it was "a general security issue".

British Airways said it had cancelled the flight based on advice from the government and was not going into further details.

On New Year’s Eve, the same flight was kept on the runway at Washington Dulles International Airport for three hours after landing, to allow security officials to board the plane and question passengers. The Boeing 747 had been escorted to Dulles by two F-16 fighter jets.

But the security expert Paul Beaver was in no doubt that the cancellation was caused by a "real and definite threat".

He said: "This is certainly unusual. The intelligence is very, very precise, which is why this one flight has been cancelled. We have got intelligence, I am told, that there was a plan to take the aircraft and destroy it over Washington or fly it into something. Washington is the definite target."

Mr Beaver said the information passed on to BA via the government was likely to have come from American intelligence.

"There is good and precise intelligence that there is more than one al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda-like group operating against the US. One is based in central America and the other is based in Europe - in London or Paris."

French judicial officials said they had received information from US intelligence that members of the al-Qaeda terrorist network may try to board the planes over Christmas. Pierre Debue, director of the French border police, said that since a number of flights were cancelled on Christmas Eve, authorities had found a few people trying to board planes nearly every day who were considered suspicious by American intelligence authorities.

Yesterday, French officials revealed that errors in spelling and transcription of Arabic names played a role in the mistaken identification of six passengers as possible terrorists and led to the emergency grounding of six Air France flights between Paris and Los Angeles.

The US raised its national security alert to the second highest level before Christmas, fearing hijackers might try to crash planes into US targets over the festive season.

And despite some grumbles, passengers appeared generally satisfied with the decision to cancel flights. "I think they’ve done the right thing," said Mike Coppolelli, a passenger from Washington, at Heathrow yesterday. "We can’t just sit around and wait for another catastrophe ... It’s not worth putting your life at risk."

Security analysts also agreed that the decision to cancel flights was the correct one.

Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International, said he suspected BA suspended the flights because of intelligence rather than concerns about names on passenger lists.

"I would suspect that they were picking up [intelligence] chatter," he said. "There must be credible intelligence that would indicate certain carriers operating certain routes are potential targets of terrorist attacks."

He said it was also possible that Washington had ordered the flight to carry armed marshals following the New Year’s Eve alert, but the BA pilots had decided that if the threat was so high, they would not fly at all.

Kevin Rosser, a terrorism analyst at the London-based Control Risks Group, said: "We are just in a world now where governments feel they have to act on scraps of information.

"I think you have to understand the position governments are in politically. If, God forbid, something terrible happens and then it emerges they had information of a risk but did not do anything, they would be totally exposed politically."

Alert at Alaskan port

THE United States suspended oil shipments for two days from Alaska’s major port of Valdez as a security precaution amid a heightened terror alert.

The halt of oil transfers onto tankers began on Tuesday and was lifted on Thursday.

It was part of "a continuing effort to ensure the security of our homeland", consistent with Code Orange, the second-highest alert level the US has been at since 21 December, said Russ Knocke, a department of homeland security spokesman.

"Right now we are allowing tanker traffic throughout the port," Lieutenant Latarsha McQueen of the Coast Guard’s Valdez Marine Safety Office said. "Appropriate safety measures are being taken with regard to the security information that we have."

It was not clear what specifically triggered the decision to suspend the traffic.

Valdez is the terminal for the trans-Alaskan pipeline from Prudhoe Bay. The 800-mile (1,280-km) pipeline normally carries about one million barrels a day to Valdez, or about 17 per cent of US domestic production.

Mike Heatwole, spokesman for the pipeline operator Alyeska Pipeline Service, said the shutdown of tanker loading did not interrupt production.

Alyeska is owned by oil companies with interests on Alaska’s North Slope. Major owners are BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil.

Concern over attacks on oil infrastructure, as well as post-war sabotage at Iraqi oil facilities and rapid demand growth in China’s booming economy, has helped oil prices remain strong.

Bid to beat lorry bombers

THREE years after a lorry driver slammed an 18-wheel vehicle into California’s state capitol building, lawmakers are considering a plan to link those carrying hazardous material to a satellite tracking system that would halt them if they were being used in a terror attack.

The lorries would be equipped with devices that would either cut off fuel to the engine or hit the brakes when activated. The proposed bill would implement the United States’ most stringent safety regulations for lorries carrying fuel and other hazardous materials, but it faces fierce opposition from haulage companies who fear becoming uncompetitive.

Assemblyman John Dutra, unhappy with the slow federal pace in addressing the issue, introduced the bill last February, and it passed easily in the state assembly. Amid protest from industry groups, the bill failed to get past the transportation committee in the state senate, where it will be reconsidered this year.

"These vehicles could be used as deadly weapons," Mr Dutra said. "Ten seconds after a tragedy of this sort, with trucks we could have disabled, everybody’s going to ask the question, ‘Why didn’t we do this?’"

At the cost of US$26 million, all of California’s 26,000 fuel delivery lorries could be equipped with satellite tracking and disabling devices, he said.

California’s highway patrol commissioner, Dwight Helmick, whose agency has been studying a variety of technologies to prevent a terror attack by a hazardous material lorry, said two or three petrol tankers are stolen every year in California, highlighting the risk. "We talk about all the magical ways of blowing up the Golden Gate Bridge. The easiest way would be to take a truck in the middle of it and detonate it," Mr Helmick said.
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[BocaGirl]

Thanks Beer for keeping me informed. I really appreciate the inside track!

BocaGirl

[wx247]

Thanks for the update.