NYT, pg1: Qaeda Strategy Is Called Cause for NEW Alarm

[DeepModem Mom]

For the second day, the NYT might be seen as "doing penance" for breaking the story two days ago that the most recent, post-DemConvention terror warning was based on old intelligence. Yesterday's lead story was "New Qaeda Activity Said to Be Major Factor in Alert," and this story is accompanied on the frontpage by the lead story, "Terror Warning Is Said to Lead to New Arrests." That's three uses of the word "new" (in contrast to the word "old") in frontpage headlines in two days.


Qaeda Strategy Is Called Cause for New Alarm
By ERIC LIPTON and BENJAMIN WEISER

Published: August 5, 2004

WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 - They scouted the streets. They took photographs. They wrote detailed surveillance reports. And then, after five years of patiently waiting, Al Qaeda operatives carried out the devastating suicide truck bombing at the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, in August 1998, killing more than 200 people and injuring thousands.

This meticulous approach to terrorism - studying targets and fine-tuning strategies for years before an attack - is in part why officials in Washington say they are so alarmed about the latest evidence of reconnaissance of financial centers in New York, New Jersey and Washington, even though much of the information dates back to the days before Sept. 11, 2001.

The same studied technique has been central to the most well-known Qaeda attacks, be they in Africa or the United States. Plots that were carried out and failed, and even plots that were considered but abandoned, like a possible attack on the Brooklyn Bridge last year, each demonstrate this same obsession. It is Al Qaeda's hallmark....

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It is an appreciation of this modus operandi, which is evident in an examination of a decade's worth of plotting and action by Al Qaeda, that has so complicated the decision on how to respond appropriately to evidence that might be dated. Old information is not necessarily bad information. It might just be a hint of a plot that in a somewhat revised form was close to being carried out....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/05plots.html