The U.S. Government announced on Monday that it had
information that terrorist attacks were planned against it
within the next week. The announcement was made by Attorney
General John Ashcroft. On October 11 a similar warning was
issued.
"The administration views this information as credible,"
Attorney General Ashcroft said. "But unfortunately, it does
not contain specific information as to the type of attack or
specific targets.
"We have decided to share with the American people that we
have alerted law enforcement," said Mr. Ashcroft. "We think
this gives people a basis for continuing to live their lives
the way they would otherwise live them, with this elevated
sense of alertness or vigilance."
He added: "It's important for the American people to
understand that these are to be taken seriously, but by
taking them seriously on a continuing basis, we can have the
good outcome of avoiding very serious additional terrorist
problems."
A "terrorist threat advisory" went out to law enforcement
agencies across the U.S. but no specific advice was given
about what to do in response.
The government issued a similar alert on Oct. 11, and no
attack followed. Robert S. Mueller III, director of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, said that the earlier alert
"may well have helped to avert such an attack."
Earlier, officials announced a suspected case of inhalation
anthrax in New York and a case of skin anthrax in New Jersey.
That brings the total cases of inhalation anthrax, the more
serious version of the disease, to nine, and the cases of
skin anthrax to six. Three of these people have died, one has
been released from the hospital and four are hospitalized in
serious condition.
Also government officials said anthrax had been found in the
mailrooms of three more government buildings: the Supreme
Court, the State Department and a building that has offices
for the Voice of America and agencies of the Department of
Health and Human Services.
The amount of anthrax found in the buildings in Washington in
the last few days was in such small amounts, officials said,
that workers were not in danger of contracting the disease.
At the State Department, for example, the risk seemed so low
that President Bush was allowed to give a speech there later
to African trade ministers.
On Monday the Supreme Court justices sat at another location
for the first time since there building was opened more than
60 years ago. That precautionary step was taken after anthrax
was found in a Supreme Court mail center in Maryland last
week. The discovery of anthrax in the Supreme Court building
itself made it likely that the Court would not return to its
regular offices for some time.
U.S. health officials said that tens of thousands of
Americans were now taking antibiotics to guard against
anthrax infection and that from now on an older medicine,
doxycycline, would be recommended instead of Cipro, a drug
whose patent is controlled by the German pharmaceutical
company Bayer A.G.
Law enforcement say they still have no concrete information
about who sent the deadly bacteria through the mails or how
many letters might have been sent.
The information, like that on which the earlier warning was
based, was taken seriously because it came from an
intelligence source that has proved reliable in the past,
officials said, and therefore could not be lightly dismissed.
The information behind today's alert stood out from the
stream of threats and warnings received by law enforcement
and intelligence agencies each day, the officials said.
