Quotes of the Morning: Are You Threatening Me?

“Authorities stepped up security Thursday after receiving what city officials called a credible threat that the New York subway could be the target of a terrorist attack in coming days. But Homeland Security officials in Washington downplayed the threat, saying it was of ‘doubtful credibility.’
[…]
But in Washington, Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said ‘the intelligence community has concluded this information to be of doubtful credibility. We shared this information early on with state and local authorities in New York.’ Knocke did not elaborate.
A counterterrorism official, who was briefed about the threat by Homeland Security authorities, said the intelligence was considered doubtful because it did not reflect ‘on-the-ground, detailed’ information. Rather, the official, who also insisted on anonymity, said the intelligence was similar to ‘what can be found on the Internet and a map of New York City.’”
-MSNBC, October 6, 2005

“So Homeland Security doesn’t think that this is a credible threat, and believes that all of this ‘warning’ is unnecessary. Does anyone remember what it used to take to make a threat credible to Homeland Security?”
-Skippy

“Agencies across the federal government are launching an aggressive and unusually open offensive aimed at thwarting terrorist plots before and during the presidential election in November.
Numerous law enforcement and counterterrorism officials also warned last week that a heightened threat of terrorist attack will persist through the January inauguration.
[…]
Members of the Washington area's Joint Terrorism Task Force plan to meet with other local and federal officials this week in Arlington to discuss potential election threats. Paul J. McNulty, the U.S. attorney in Alexandria, said the steps will include urging police to run the names of anyone they stop in coming weeks -- even for a traffic violation -- through the watch list at the FBI's Terrorism Screening Center in Crystal City.
‘We want law enforcement to pay attention to small things and to suspicious things,’ McNulty said. ‘We want to get down to the foot patrol, the cop on the beat level, so when a police officer responds to something or sees something curious, that officer realizes it's especially important now to take the extra step to check it out.’"
-Washington Post, September 27, 2004

“Since May U.S. officials had been warning of an al Qaeda attack on one of several major events over the summer — the Olympics and the two national political conventions — or timed to influence the election.
The March 11 bombing of commuter train stations in Madrid, in which nearly 200 died, was seen as dooming the incumbent government of Jose Maria Aznar and elevating his anti-war challenger.
In a campaign dominated by national security, the bin Laden tape came as a late surprise. It was unclear what effect it might have. A CBS News poll conducted from Thursday to Friday saw no significant change in opinions in responses on Saturday, the day after the bin Laden tape emerged.
On the campaign trail, the candidates addressed the tape within familiar language about the war on terrorism: Mr. Bush indicated that the threat was too serious to trust to Kerry, while the Democrat argued that the president had failed to capture bin Laden.
On Sunday, Mr. Bush promised, ‘we'll eventually get Osama bin Laden. In the meantime, we're destroying his network, slowly but surely, systematically destroying it.’"
-CBS News, November 2, 2004

“Any idea home many times the security level has been raised since the last election? Once, for mass transit only, and only after the London bus bombings occurred. In 2004? One time for the entire nation, one time for three major ‘markets’ (New York, New Jersey and Washington D.C., and twice they simply announced that they had ‘credible intelligence’ without raising the threat level). Does anyone else think that the New York threat wouldn’t have been dismissed so easily if this were an election year?”
-Skippy