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 today's story is accompanied on the frontpage by "Qaeda Strategy Is Called Cause for New Alarm." That's three uses of the word "new" (in contrast to the word "old") in frontpage headlines in two days.
Terror Warning Is Said to Lead to New Arrests
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: August 5, 2004
WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 - The Bush administration said Wednesday that the United States and its allies had begun a campaign to disrupt terrorist operations around the world, including the arrest of a suspected senior member of Al Qaeda in Britain.
The suspected Qaeda operative was among 12 men being questioned by the British authorities after raids prompted in part by the same intelligence information that led the administration to elevate the terror threat level in the United States over the weekend, including detailed reports about buildings housing major financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington. The Qaeda member, referred to as Abu Moussa al-Hindi or Abu Eisa al-Hindi, was of intense interest to the United States, a senior American official said.
A day after senior White House officials said the decision to raise the terror alert level on Sunday had been driven in part by new intelligence beyond the information about specific buildings in the United States, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters that "there are some ongoing operations under way'' to disrupt terrorist activity....
***
In Washington, the senior official said there were "possibly" direct ties between the arrests in Britain and the threats to the buildings in the United States.
The official described the arrests as "part of this web that emanates from Pakistan." The official said, "What you saw in the U.K. was a result in part of information gained" from the arrest last month of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, the Pakistani computer engineer whose capture led the Central Intelligence Agency to computer files detailing the reconnaissance of financial institutions in the United States.
Administration officials signaled that in light of the new information from Pakistan and the second strain of intelligence reporting, they had stepped up their efforts at home and abroad to track down suspected terrorists and guard against the possibility of an attack.
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British news organizations have reported conflicting accounts of whether the arrests stemmed from new intelligence developed after Mr. Khan's arrest. By some accounts, the raids had been planned for weeks, but by others they were related to the new information....
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/05/politics/05terror.html
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