January 03, 2004

British Cancel Another Flight as Allies Query U.S.

British Airways canceled another flight to the United States on Friday as the Bush administration faced questions from American allies about the reliability of the intelligence information that has led to the recent rash of flight cancellations.

The British airline grounded a flight from London to Washington — the third cancellation over all in 24 hours — and canceled a flight scheduled for Saturday from London to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Seven international flights have now been canceled since last Saturday after the Bush administration began an aggressive approach to defending American airspace when the nation was put on orange or "high" alert on Dec. 21. Administration officials said no arrests had been made in connection with any of the more than a dozen international flights subjected to rigorous scrutiny. And officials have acknowledged that even now, they are uncertain whether they have succeeded in foiling a terrorist plot.

"I don't think we know yet, and we may never know," a senior administration official said.
[We may never know a lot, including what really happened on 9/11 and on whose orders. Such is Life and the dark and secret world of the Islamofascist terrorists.--Jennie T.]

The latest concern over the tighter security — perhaps unparalleled in commercial aviation history — was raised by Mexico on Friday. A spokesman for President Vicente Fox questioned decisions by the United States on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day to cancel Aeromexico's Flight 490 from Mexico City to Los Angeles. The spokesman, Agustin Gutiérrez Canet, said that armed Mexican agents had been scheduled to fly aboard the flights and that the authorities made special efforts to interrogate passengers closely and inspect luggage.

In another indication of the turmoil resulting from the increased security measures, an American official said that the cancellation of the British Airways flights was not in response to United States safety concerns, but rather was prompted by the refusal of British pilots to fly with armed marshals on board. The United States put other nations on notice earlier this week that it would not allow certain suspicious flights into its airspace without armed marshals on board.

Turns out this was gun-grabbing bunkum on behalf of the anti-gun NYTimes!
It now turns out that the BA London to Washington flights were cancelled based on specific intelligence:
AL QAEDA'S D.C. DEATH JET PLOT

An al Qaeda terror team has been plotting to hijack Washington-bound British Airways Flight 223 and crash it into the nation's capital, officials said yesterday.

The frightening - and specific - intelligence is one factor behind the recent rash of airline cancellations, including Flight 223 again yesterday.
[...]
The information about Flight 223, from London's Heathrow Airport to Dulles International Airport, came from a foreign source inside al Qaeda, who claimed the terror group wanted to strike during the holiday, sources said.
[...]
Intelligence leading to the cancellations of flights to New York and Washington from Paris and London came from al Qaeda detainees in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Of course, the Al Queda detainees in question have only been picked up and interrogated in the last few months and in the case of the Turkish suspects, within the last month after the jihadi bombings in Instanbul, so I think it's safe to say that this information is pretty "fresh" and timely.

In addition to the flight cancellations, foreign airliners have been escorted into American airspace by F-16 military fighters, and a Mexican flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles was turned around in mid-air.

The events have left both domestic security officials and international travelers on edge over the prospect of another attack by Al Qaeda. American officials said they were determined to avoid the kind of missed warning signs that preceded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, even if it meant inconveniencing travelers.

Government officials refuse to talk about key details of their decisions to ground the flights because they are classified, but they say that the anxieties are driven by a confluence of factors indicating that another attack on the scale of the Sept. 11 hijackings might be in the works. And the White House's approach, the result of both cold analytical intelligence and gut-level emotion, helped set in motion the extraordinary security measures seen over the last 10 days.

Two days before an Air France flight to Los Angeles was to depart from Paris on Christmas Eve, President Bush's top national security advisers briefed him at the White House on their growing worries about the route, administration officials said.

American officials were picking up intelligence indicating terrorists might be on board that flight or others from Paris to Los Angeles. They had persuaded the French, despite initial resistance, to post armed marshals on board. But the Americans remained nervous and were considering urging the French to cancel the flight.

President Bush had one threshold question for Tom Ridge, his secretary for homeland security, as they met at the White House situation room on Dec. 22. "Would you let your son or daughter fly on that plane?" he asked Mr. Ridge, according to a senior administration official privy to the conversation.

"Absolutely not," the secretary responded. "Well," Mr. Bush said, "neither would I."
[...]
The level of intelligence "chatter" picked up by the American intelligence community, and used as a gauge of terrorist activity, had risen to alarming levels by the time Mr. Ridge raised the threat level, officials said. Electronic eavesdropping, monitoring of e-mail messages, and information from informers picked up snippets of suspicious references to flight numbers and cities, and it pointed up concern about specific flights as well, including London to Washington, Paris to Los Angeles, and Mexico City to Los Angeles, officials said...[...]

In the hours and days leading up to the Dec. 21 orange alert, the suspicious intelligence became louder, more credible and more specific, officials said. And it appeared to take a sudden upturn just before Dec. 21, surprising even some national security officials who said they had no reason to expect the alert level to increase in the day or two beforehand. By the time the alert was declared, officials said, they were deeply concerned that an international flight would be Al Qaeda's next means of attack on the United States.

Daniel Benjamin, a former counterterrorism specialist with the National Security Council, said he spoke with officials who "thought the orange alert was easily justified based on the available intelligence, and one person could even have imagined it going higher" to a red alert, which has never happened under the current threat system.

The French routes were among their biggest concerns, and intelligence pointed to the possibility of attacks on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, officials said.

While I'm sure it is an absolute hassle for the passengers on these cancelled or delayed flights, I know that if it were a passenger, I'd rather be safe and alive than sorry and dead!
What is our government doing, but precisely what we want for them to do, which is to gather intelligence and take the appropriate safety measures to look out for our safety as (air) travellers and as civilians on the ground living in peace and freedom?
After all, of those Americans killed on 9/11, several hundred died in the crashing planes but also so did thousands more in the buildings on American soil that were bombed by those planes, so you never know.
The life saved may be yours...or mine!
(Could Islamist terrorists crash a plane into your house or building? It's still possible in the future, but at least it won't be these planes during the holidays just past because of the alert and the steps taken.)
It's a comfort to me to know that President Bush and Homeland Security Sec. Ridge think of the safety of you and me as they would that of their own "children" and family and ladies and gentlemen, it doesn't get any better or more protective than that!
(And those ingrate nations France and Mexico should get over themselves as soon as possible! After all, it's American tourists and their dollars they want. We can't spend any money in their countries if we're deceased!)