Intelligence pros say the White
House is manufacturing terrorist alerts to keep the issue alive in
the minds of voters and to keep President Bush's approval ratings
high, Capitol Hill Blue reports.
The Thursday report said that the administration is engaging
in "hysterics" in issuing numerous terror alerts that have little
to no basis in fact.
"Unfortunately, we haven't made a lot of progress against
al-Qaida or the war on terrorism," one FBI agent familiar with terrorism
operations told CHB. "We've been spinning our wheels for several weeks
now."
Other sources within the bureau and the Central Intelligence
Agency said the administration is pressuring intelligence agencies
to develop "something, anything" to support an array of non-specific
terrorism alerts issued by the White House and the Department of Homeland
Security.
"Most of the time, we have little to go on, only unconfirmed
snippets of information," a second FBI agent, who also was not named
in the report, said. "Most alerts are issued without any concrete
data to back up the assumptions."
Indeed, the most recent terrorism alerts have been issued
absent specific threat information. Each of the accompanying warnings
comes without any shift in the nation's new color-coded alert system;
the
current warning level of yellow, or "elevated," has been in place
since late September.
Even recent reports regarding five Arab men who may have
slipped into the country via Canada using phony identification could
be politically motivated, one expert said.
"We have very, very little to support the notion that
these five represent any more of a threat than any of the other thousands
of people who enter this nation every day," terrorism expert Ronald
Blackstone said. "It's a fishing expedition."
On Wednesday, one of the five, a Pakistani jeweler, Mohammed
Asghar, was tracked down in Pakistan by The Associated Press. He told
reporters there he'd never been to the U.S., though he said he tried
once – two months ago – to use false documents to get into Britain
to find work.
"I imagine the finger pointing has started at the White
House," Blackstone said.
On Thursday, President Bush said of the Asghar case: "We
need to follow up on forged passports and people trying to come into
our country illegally."
"Don't misunderstand, there is a real terrorist threat
to this country," another FBI agent told CHB. But, the agent continued,
"every time we go public with one of these phony 'heightened state
of alerts,' it just numbs the public against the day when we have
another real alert."
Last year, the FBI issued alerts that terrorists may attack
stadiums, nuclear power plants, shopping centers, synagogues, apartment
houses, subways, and the Liberty Bell, the Brooklyn Bridge and other
New York City landmarks, reported Knight-Ridder newspapers. The bureau
also advised Americans to be wary of small airplanes, fuel tankers
and scuba divers.
CHB reported that FBI and CIA sources said a recent White
House memo listing the war on terrorism as a definitive political
advantage and fund-raising tool is just one of many documents discussing
how to best utilize the terrorist threat.
"Of course the White House is going to exploit the terrorism
threat to the fullest political advantage," said Democratic strategist
Russ Barksdale. "They would be fools not to. We'd do the same thing."
The White House did not return phone calls from WorldNetDaily
seeking comment.
Knight-Ridder Newspapers, meanwhile, reported the FBI
has never meant for all its warnings and advisories to be made public.
"Everything is being described as a terror alert, and
that's not what this stuff is," said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for
the Department of Homeland Security, in a July interview.
But, he added, "if information is becoming public, then
we naturally cannot work in a vacuum and pretend like all this information
is not becoming public."
"We live in a world of threats; not all of them necessitate
a warning," says FBI terrorist warning chief Kevin Giblin, a 27-year
veteran of the bureau. He told Knight-Ridder there should be a generally
increased level of vigilance, and he looks to the color-coded advisory
system – not the alerts intended for police – to signal it.
The threat of terrorism may also be helping the White
House manage the sagging economy. Officials at home finance giant
Freddie Mac said yesterday that the threat of terrorism may have played
a role in bringing 30-year mortgage rates down to 5.85 percent, their
lowest since an average 5.83 percent in 1965.
"Current issues such as the possibility of military actions
abroad, heightened terrorism alerts and an unexpected drop in consumer
confidence contributed to the decline in mortgage rates this week,"
Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac chief economist, told Reuters.
Jon E. Dougherty
is a staff reporter.
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