WASHINGTON - In Newport, R.I., the high cost of public security is putting
this July's Tall Ships festival in question.
In Pennsylvania, state troopers are begging Gov. Edward Rendell to keep
funding extra police positions established in the wake of the Sept. 11
terror attacks.
In Arkansas, the state is combining revenue bonds and federal antiterrorism
grants to help pay for a statewide wireless public-safety communications
system.
All across the United States, authorities are preparing for a summer they
worry could be both hot and dangerous.
Their efforts will only be spurred by the announcement by federal officials
that Al Qaeda probably has operatives in place in the US who may be
preparing a large-scale attack timed to affect the November election.
Given that Al Qaeda's intentions have been long known, Wednesday's added
emphasis might be particularly important.
"Either it's political, or they have serious intelligence," says Juliette
Kayyem, a homeland security expert at Harvard University's Kennedy School of
Government in Cambridge, Mass.
US officials said Wednesday that a continuous stream of new and credible
information indicates that the threat of a terrorist attack is high. The
attack might be against a high-profile event, such as the political
conventions, or even the dedication of the World War II Memorial in
Washington this weekend, said officials.
The information is not unlike that seen in the past and consists at least
partly of chatter on Islamic websites and other anti-US forums. But the
intelligence is thought credible and is backed by high levels of
corroboration. A high-profile target is likely in part because terror groups
believe that the Madrid train bombings helped influence the Spanish
election, bringing to power a government that pledged to withdraw Spanish
troops from Iraq.
The more spectacular the attack, the more influence Al Qaeda might have on
the November elections - at least, that may be terror groups' thinking.
At the same time the FBI remains concerned that soft targets such as
shopping malls offer an easier opportunity to terrorists than, say, a
security-conscious political convention.
"My concern is the parallel attack that occurs in the same city at the same
time," says Ms. Kayyem of the JFK School.
Raising public awareness of the possibility of attacks during the summer
months is important, say other experts. People may be less aware of danger
while they're on vacation. And in any case in recent months, the focus on
Iraq may have made Americans more complacent about safety in their own
country.
"It could be subway stations, malls ... a series where you get the whole
country in a panic," says Bo Dietl, a security consultant and head of Beau
Dietl & Associates in New York City. "They'll hit different places."
Yet this week's warning may seem a bit superfluous for law-enforcement
officials in the most obvious target locations - Boston (due to the
Democratic convention), Washington, and New York.
New York, for instance, has remained at "level orange," or a high state of
alert, even when the rest of the country dropped a notch to level yellow.
Police guard crucial bridges and tunnels, pulling over and searching almost
all trucks before they drive the structures.
The security is likely to tighten by late August when the Republicans come
to town. Entire blocks of the city will be off limits to anyone who does not
work in the area around Madison Square Garden, the site of the convention.
On Tuesday, the states of New York and Vermont announced a pilot program to
link state and local law enforcement to the FBI to receive real-time
information on terrorism threats, as well as on federal databases.
Former New York FBI chief James Kallstrom says the program, a first in the
nation, could help state troopers catch potential terrorists. He notes that
on Sept. 9, 2001, one of the 9/11 hijackers was stopped by a Maryland state
trooper for going 90 miles per hour. "Although the trooper did everything by
the book, he was not able to make a contemporaneous inquiry with federal
authorities as to this individual's potential terrorist involvement," says
Mr. Kallstrom, now the senior terrorism adviser to Gov. George Pataki.
New York has even recruited the city's 28,000 doormen, janitors, and
apartment maintenance workers to provide the police with tips about
suspicious activity. They will go through a four-hour security-awareness
training program.
Elsewhere, one issue is a possible shortage of security personnel. More than
40 percent of the states' Army National Guard troops are deployed or
preparing for deployment to Iraq. The shortage leaves some concerned that
state efforts to protect against terrorism will be hobbled.
Some states have tried to compensate by adding new personnel. Washington,
for example, spent $200,000 training new firefighters after the state's
largest guard unit went to Iraq. Money may also be a problem. A recent study
by the Council on Foreign Relations charged that the federal government is
drastically underfunding state and local responders, and it recommended
adding $98 billion for the task to the US budget, spread over five years.
