[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Vast Force Is Deployed for Security at Convention

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Vast Force Is Deployed for Security at Convention

August 25, 2004
 By DAVID JOHNSTON and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM 



 

The New York Police Department and the largest armada of
land, air and maritime forces ever assembled to provide
security at a national political gathering are being
deployed in New York for the Republican convention,
according to federal, state and local officials. They said
yesterday that they were planning an intentionally huge
response to intelligence that Al Qaeda hoped to carry out
an attack to disrupt this year's elections. 

The country's terror alert level, which was raised early
this month, will remain at orange status, or high alert,
throughout the Republican National Convention and probably
well beyond, according to several senior intelligence
officials. They said they were increasingly concerned about
an attack, even though there was no specific intelligence
indicating a strike during the convention, which begins
Monday. 

"Have we collected intelligence that there is going to be a
hit in the financial district during the Republican
National Convention?" said Pasquale J. D'Amuro, the
assistant director in charge of the New York office of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. "No. But intelligence we
have collected indicates that Al Qaeda still desires to
attack both domestically and abroad. They want to kill
Americans." 

With the alert level ratcheted up, even in the absence of a
specific threat, thousands of Republicans arriving in New
York are likely to be subjected to a new round of
potentially confusing public warnings about the risk of
attack alongside soothing official exhortations to enjoy
the party, which will take place inside a security envelope
surrounding Madison Square Garden. 

"Attacking Madison Square Garden would be like pulling a
bank job at Fort Knox," a senior counterterrorism official
said, referring to the security measures being put into
place this week. "It will be the hardest target in the
world." 

Officials from the National Security Council quietly
visited New York last week for briefings with the local
authorities. Today, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge
will inspect arrangements for the convention. 

The backbone of security is being provided by the
37,000-member New York Police Department, which has a
budget larger than all but 19 of the world's standing
armies. To prevent an attack, the department will flood the
streets with officers and employ high and low technology,
from seven surveillance helicopters to plainclothes
detectives traveling the subways and eyeballing other
riders. 

Up to 10,000 officers, many reassigned from narcotics and
other duties, will be part of an enormous show of force
around Madison Square Garden. That display will include
special heavily armed "Hercules" antiterror squads, snipers
and phalanxes of officers set up around the arena to search
buses and trucks before they enter the area. In addition to
the helicopters, several of which can feed close-up video
surveillance images to mobile command centers on the
ground, 26 launches will patrol waterways, and officers
will use 181 bomb-sniffing dogs, many of them borrowed from
other law enforcement agencies. 

"We can cover all the bases with 37,000 police officers,"
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday. "As
big as the R.N.C. deployment is, we have a reserve on top
of that. New York would be a poor choice for the
malicious-minded to try anything, especially now." 

Mr. Kelly has said that virtually the entire department
will be mobilized next week, when in addition to the
convention, the department will police the United States
Open tennis tournament, and baseball games at Yankee
Stadium in the Bronx and Shea Stadium in Queens. 

Not counting the costs incurred by federal agencies,
security in New York is estimated at about $60 million, out
of a convention budget of about $166 million, as concerns
have broadened to cover not only the week of the
convention, but also the weeks before and after it. Police
are girding for protests, including a planned march on
Sunday, which organizers have predicted will attract as
many as 250,000 people, and more spontaneous
demonstrations. 

The Secret Service is coordinating security arrangements,
but more than two dozen federal, state and local agencies
will contribute personnel and equipment. Those agencies
include the Long Island Rail Road, the Postal Service and
the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad,
which will help monitor the airspace over New York. 

The Department of Homeland Security will contribute bicycle
and motorcycle officers, helicopters crews,
explosives-detecting dog teams, undercover agents, mobile
communications experts, hazardous materials teams,
intelligence analysts and Coast Guard teams trained in
boarding suspicious watercraft. The federal government's
costs will run in the millions, most of it from money
allocated for special events. 

Five officials who had been briefed on the latest
intelligence analysis discussed the overall threat level as
Republicans prepared to arrive in New York and as
intelligence analysts searching for clues to Al Qaeda's
intentions pored over computer materials seized during
recent arrests in Britain and Pakistan. American officials
have said since early July that they have received
intelligence suggesting that Al Qaeda hoped to carry out an
attack to disrupt the elections. 

The officials said that an investigation of eight men
charged with terrorism-related offenses in Britain had
provided a clearer picture of the surveillance operations
at five American financial institutions. The authorities
now believe the surveillance was carried out by Issa
al-Hindi. They said he traveled to the United States along
with two confederates, Nadeem Tarmohammed and Quaisar
Shaffi, who were arrested on Aug. 3 by the British
authorities. Investigators have concluded that they stayed
in Manhattan hotels during the surveillance. 

The American authorities are compiling timelines that show
Mr. Hindi traveled to the United States in 2000 and 2001 at
the same time as Mr. Tarmohammed and Mr. Shaffi. The
authorities are continuing to investigate whether other
people helped the reconnaissance missions. They could
include Adnan G. el-Shukrijumah, an associate of Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed, the chief architect of the Sept. 11
attacks who was captured last year and is being held in an
undisclosed location. 

Mr. Kelly said that F.B.I. agents, police detectives and
other investigators on the Joint Terrorist Task Force were
working to learn where Mr. Hindi was, whom he was with and
what he was doing during his time in New York City. 

"Obviously what al-Hindi did in the U.S. and who he did it
with is of concern," Mr. Kelly said. "So there is this
examination of his whereabouts and his contacts in this
county. That's ongoing." 

Among the thousands of computer discs and other materials
seized during the British arrests are bank account records,
telephone numbers and credit cards that appear to have been
used in the United States. That suggests that the
surveillance group may have closer ties to the United
States than was previously understood. So far, links to
people in the United States are not clearly understood, but
no one in the United States has been arrested, the
officials said. 

Investigators appear to be divided on the overall purpose
of the surveillance group, which conducted detailed
vulnerability studies of financial institutions in New
York, New Jersey and Washington. There is little
information in the voluminous cache of documents to suggest
that the group had gone beyond the surveillance missions to
starting preparations to carry out a plot, according to
some officials. 

But others investigators believe that impression may
change. They said Mr. Hindi appeared to have spent time in
the spring updating the three- and four-year-old
surveillance reports on the financial institutions,
possibly preparing to launch a plot against them. In
addition, the officials said, there have been recent
reports that Mr. Hindi may have studied improvised
explosives in the spring in Pakistan. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/politics/campaign/25threat.html?ex=1094469109&ei=1&en=70429e759c787c8a


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