Well, to follow up on Michael's report from NYC, today's Washington Post lead story is enough to scare you shitless (if it's true). They've got evidence that the terrorists have supposedly been casing the IMF and World Bank HQs in DC (glad I don't work at the Bank anymore!). A brief and scary excerpt:
The surveillance, recounted in chilling detail in newly obtained documents, included the location of security desks and cameras in the buildings; traffic and pedestrian patterns surrounding them; employee and vehicle routines; the locations of nearby fire departments, police stations, libraries and schools; and what kinds of explosives would do the most damage to the structures.I don't know what to make of this. If it's true, it's frightening. And in contrast to the article Michael cites in the NYT (I still need to check it out), this one is pretty damn specific. My only concern is whether this is even true. Bush has been putting HEAVY pressure on the Pakistanis to come up with something NOW to show that he's on top of the war on terror. It's certainly not beyond our intelligence services to fake documents, why couldn't the Pakistanis have fakes these? Or why couldn't Al-Qaeda have done this just to bluff us?
U.S. officials said the operatives noted that one of the buildings had three male security guards but that only one carried a weapon. "Getting up to the higher floors is not very difficult if you go there midweek, as I did," one operative added....
In one example of detailed surveillance cited by a senior administration intelligence official, operatives logged the flow of pedestrians outside one targeted building at midday in the middle of a week. "Fourteen persons pass by every minute" on one side of the block, they concluded.
Other communications focused on security barricades, traffic patterns, the use of sewers as escape routes and the locations of nearby fire and police stations, schools and libraries, officials said. For one building, potential attackers discussed how visitors must sign a book telling where they are going, but "on Sunday there is no security. This is not the case on Saturday."
Again, it bugs me that I just have no faith in Bush anymore. Under any previous administration I'd have trusted this report. Now I don't know what to think.
