U.S. should stay at yellow alert, Bush aides say

Herald news services

WASHINGTON — Authorities in New York increased security Tuesday around the Statue of Liberty and other landmarks as top Bush administration officials huddled in Washington, D.C., to decide how to calm a nation made increasingly anxious by alarms about more terrorist attacks.

Their decision: Do nothing different.

After several consultations throughout the day, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, FBI Director Robert Mueller and other top aides to President Bush determined that a flurry of recent intelligence warnings about looming attacks were uncorroborated and too general to warrant a full mobilization of the nation’s counterterrorism apparatus.

The FBI and the New York Police Department issued warnings about the possibility of attacks in New York City, where residents are still on edge from the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.

"The United States government has received unsubstantiated and uncorroborated information that terrorists are considering attacks against landmarks in New York City," the FBI said in a terse statement. "While the FBI has no information as to time, date or method of attack, out of an abundance of caution, information has been transmitted to law enforcement in New York."

New York police increased their presence at City Hall and the Brooklyn Bridge, and warned of additional checkpoints throughout the city during the Memorial Day weekend.

The NYPD Harbor Unit deployed divers to check for submersed bombs around the United Nations on the East River, and along the Hudson River where the ships will be moored.

Tuesday’s decision to remain at "yellow" alert — the third of five levels meant to indicate increasing levels of danger from terrorist attack — came as U.S. officials continued to sound warnings about the possibility of more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell separately warned that terrorists might acquire weapons of mass destruction. "Terrorists are trying every way they can" to get nuclear, chemical or biological weapons," Powell said.

Also Tuesday, Bush warned that al-Qaida terrorists still "want to hurt us," while his Pentagon chief said terrorists inevitably will acquire weapons of mass destruction from countries like Iraq, Iran or North Korea.

In a shift from previous refusals to give Congress certain information, the administration showed members of the Senate Judiciary Committee portions of a July memo from a Phoenix FBI agent who issued a pre-Sept. 11 warning of Arabs attending U.S. flight schools.

The agent who wrote the warning hoped his memo would lead to screenings of Middle Easteners who came to study U.S. airport operations, according to government officials familiar with his account.

The request was formally rejected within several weeks after midlevel officials at FBI headquarters determined they did not have the manpower to carry out the task, sources familiar with the memo said Tuesday.

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