Did they think a pre-election attack here wouldn't result in the same outcome as it did in Spain, and so planned to disrupt the elections themselves? From the New York Times, :
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 - A Pakistani man whose arrest provided information about the reconnaissance of financial institutions in New York, Newark and Washington was also communicating with Qaeda operatives who the authorities say are plotting to carry out an attack intended to disrupt the fall elections, a senior intelligence official said Saturday.Senior intelligence and counterterrorism officials said it was not clear whether the people behind the surveillance of the financial institutions and the people involved in the election threat were part of the same group, or belonged to overlapping or separate ones.
The arrest last month of the Pakistani, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, had already prompted a search in the United States, Britain and other countries to locate the people behind the surveillance, which took place three or four years ago. Now the authorities say Mr. Khan's arrest is also helping them unravel a threat to carry out an attack this year inside the United States.
It is not clear whether Mr. Khan represents the second channel of intelligence that officials have alluded to in recent days that, they say, convinced them that the reconnaissance of financial institutions was related to current threats.
But he is emerging as a central figure in an expanding web of connections that, the authorities say, indicates that they may have penetrated an operational Qaeda group whose intentions were previously unknown.
This shows it was worth all the extra Security, also to deter the Enemy from making immediate attacks. As for bleeding heart Liberals, they should be forced to spend three months in Saudi Arabia and witness at least one Stoning. Am willing to bet they would never utter the words
'politically correct' again. Or even think it...!
One wonders if a few of them won't be mixing in with the protesters at the Republican convention. Smiling every time one of these 'sensitive' liberals manages to break the legs of yet another police horse with their marbles...
bush should be forced to spend three months in saudi arabia to see what his good friends are really like: stoning, cutting off hands, no rights for women, beheadings, racism.
oops, bush funked up yet again, may have lost bin laden
http://www.theherald.co.uk/21597.shtml
US-exposed double agent led to rushed arrests in UK
IAN BRUCE, Defence Correspondent August 09 2004
BRITISH anti-terrorist police were forced to arrest 12 suspects last week – two after a high-speed car chase through busy suburban streets – because a US official accidentally revealed the name of an al Qaeda double-agent, according to intelligence sources.
They said the American official confirmed to a US newspaper that Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, the terrorist network's leading communications expert, was the source of new information on al Qaeda's targeting of financial buildings in Washington, New York, and Newark.
Khan had been arrested in Lahore on July 13, and subsequently "turned" by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence Agency. When his name appeared in print, he was working for a combined ISI/CIA task force, sending encrypted e-mails to key al Qaeda figures in the hope of pinpointing their locations and intentions.
Some of the individuals he contacted had already sent encoded replies when his cover was blown.
The breaking news abruptly ended the Pakistani operation and sent a shockwave across British and American counter-terrorist agencies.
British police had to mount raids in Greater London and Lancashire the next day, to prevent suspects disappearing as a result of the announcement of Khan's capture and the intelligence gleaned from his computer discs.
Some were taken by armed officers in shops and on the street. Two were captured after a high-speed pursuit through busy streets in Blackburn, Lancashire. Such arrests are normally carried out at night or just before dawn to minimise the risk to the public and catch targeted individuals at their lowest physical ebb.
A British counter-terrorist spokesman refused to say why the arrests were made in daylight, but confirmed "it would be a fair assessment to say there was an element of urgency". He added: "On occasion, something can happen to prompt us to move faster than we normally would have liked."
It is understood that a number of those detained in the UK were already under surveillance, although five suspects are thought to have slipped the net and gone to ground.
One of the 12 arrested last Tuesday has already been released without charge.
Khan, a gifted student from Karachi, who studied in Britain and speaks English well, is believed to have made a detailed reconnaissance of Heathrow airport in November and December last year, while living in Reading.
Information he gave after his detention by a CIA-supervised snatch operation by Pakistani special forces led the authorities to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian with a £17m bounty on his head for his involvement in the 1998 US embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.
Khan's wife is the sister of what intelligence sources describe as "a senior ranking figure" in the Taliban, the hardline Islamic group which ruled Afghanistan until the US-led invasion in 2001.
A British security source said: "Khan's voluntary co-operation is potentially the biggest breakthrough against al Qaeda since the war on terrorism began."
The computer expert had travelled to Britain four times on indulgence tickets obtained through his father, who works for Pakistani Airlines.
Babar Ahmad, 30, a British citizen from Tooting, south London, arrested last week in a separate operation, is facing extradition to the US on charges of terrorist fund-raising. He has been named in the US media as a relative of Khan.
Wahey!!!This Kahn geezer's prooving to be a major league, thorn in the anus for our good friends at al qaeda.
Mega~ if the Bush Admin is screwing up so much, why do you keep quoting all this stuff being done by the Bush Admin, which appears to be working so well the last few weeks?
btw, it was a Liberal newspaper that outed the informer. Figures.