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Threat Assessment II: Zubaydah Tip Prompted Alert, Official Says The terrorist threat alert for New York issued this week was prompted by information from the highest-ranking al-Qaeda operative captured by the United States, a senior law enforcement official said yesterday (see GSN, May 22). The information about the possible threat came from Abu Zubaydah during a debriefing last weekend, the official said. The information was deemed possibly credible since the U.S. military has been able to corroborate some other statements Zubaydah had made, according to the New York Times. Authorities, however, have not been able to substantiate some of the more dangerous claims made by Zubaydah, such as that terrorists have plotted to plant bombs inside apartment buildings or that al-Qaeda had been close to creating a crude nuclear weapon, U.S. officials said. It is not clear whether Zubaydah is cooperating with U.S. officials, the senior law enforcement official said. The FBI and New York municipal law enforcement officials disagree over whether the terrorist threat alert was meant to be issued to the public, the Times reported. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said he believed the FBI was going to issue a warning to the public Tuesday, but the bureau did not do so. The New York police themselves publicly announced the threat that day, according to the Times. “It wasn’t made public,” Kelly said. “I don’t know why, but I do know they confirmed it later in the day.” A spokesman for the FBI’s New York City office said the bureau had no intention of releasing a public warning Tuesday. “Obviously there was some confusion between the two agencies about whether or not the warning was to be made public,” said FBI spokesman Joseph Valiquette. “But there was never any intention on the part of the FBI to go public. The intention of the FBI was to pass on to our law enforcement partners intelligence information that had been made known to us. And this is what we did” (Al Baker, New York Times, May 23). Target: White House Meanwhile, Zubaydah has also provided further information indicating that the White House was the target of the fourth hijacked aircraft on Sept. 11, officials said today. That airplane, United Flight 93, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers fought with the hijackers. Many have previously assumed that the White House had been a potential target, but the U.S. Capitol and CIA Headquarters in Virginia were also considered as possibilities, officials said (Associated Press/Sydney Morning Herald, May 23).
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