White House Jumped Gun on Politically-Timed Terror Alert

[Dover]

The Bush Administration jumped the gun with their high-profile "terror alert" two weeks ago -- an alert planned, coincidently, right on the heels of the Democratic National Convention.

Two weeks ago, when Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned of possible al-Qaida attacks, the "where" was very specific: financial institutions in New York City, Washington and Newark, N.J.
The "when," however, was a mystery. And since Ridge's announcement, the Bush administration has discovered no evidence of imminent plans by terrorists to attack U.S. buildings, a White House official admitted Thursday.

"Perhaps our announcement was premature," the official admitted sheepishly.


...snip..

The FBI and local police still haven't determined whether the surveillance was performed by a single person or several people, and the FBI has not yet identified anyone involved in the surveillance, the White House official said Thursday, adding that the detailed reconnaissance indicated "an awful lot of time and energy put into it."

The surveillance records had been accessed for unknown purposes this spring, months later than authorities had previously disclosed, the official said. The government had said earlier that some files had been reviewed as recently as January.

But some within the Department of Homeland Security questioned the timing of the terror alerts, issued immediately after the Democratic National Convention closed in Boston and succesfully diverting attention from the official launch of Senator John Kerry's campaign for President.

"We had the information before the convention and we didn't announce it," one DHS agent grumbles. "We had the information during the convention and didn't announcement. Nothing changed but we dropped the alert bomb right after the convention. If I were a Democrat, I'd be suspicious."

Another administration official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, claims the White House still would have issued the terror alerts even if it had known at the time that the surveillance documents did not point to an imminent operation...cont'd

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_5024.shtml