|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
U.S. Lowers Terror Alert Levels for Financial Sites
The United States lowered the terrorist alert level yesterday from orange to yellow for financial sites in Washington, New York and northern New Jersey, the New York Times reported (see GSN, Sept. 29). The announcement does not mean the risk of a terrorist attack on the United States has lessened, said James Loy, deputy secretary for Homeland Security. “We are as concerned today as we were a month ago,” Loy said. “The whole notion of taking a deep breath and saying, ‘Wow, we got past this, and now we are OK for a while,’ is, in my mind, a very dangerous train of thought.” The Homeland Security Department imposed the heightened state of alert on Aug. 1 based on computer records found in Pakistan indicating that al-Qaeda operatives had even before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks been monitoring U.S. financial buildings, including the World Bank in Washington, the Citigroup building in Manhattan and the Prudential Financial building in Newark, N.J. As a result of the lowered threat level, police in Washington ended a 24-hour-a-day check of all vehicles passing the U.S. Capitol. “It is a recognition we are a safe society, but we also have to be an open society, which means we have to work our way to as normal a state as possible,” said Mayor Anthony Williams (Eric Lipton, New York Times, Nov. 11).
| ||||||||||
Back to top
