Here is an answer for the persisting voting fraud mess in Florida.
US fears attacks ahead of electionsAdd to Clippings
timesofindia.indiatimes.com
AFP[ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2004 11:39:08 AM ]
WASHINGTON: US authorities fear an attack by al-Qaeda militants before the November 2 presidential election, top US officials said Monday.
The officials fear an attack similar to the March attack in Madrid ahead of Spanish elections which resulted in voters throwing out the conservative government of Jose Maria Aznar and sweeping Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero into office.
"We received threat information in the spring about al-Qaeda's intention to hit us before the election," a senior US Justice Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"We've received no intelligence that contradicts our initial intelligence on al-Qaeda's intention to attack us before the election," said a senior FBI official at the same event.
The officials also said they had no specific information of a target or the date of an attack.
When the initial information of the threat came in "the window was eight months large, now it is five or six weeks large," said the official.
"Nothing since then has changed our assessment received in the spring. Nothing has changed, but the window is narrowing."
Especially rigorous security conditions were put into place at many of the large public events of the year, including the inauguration of the World War II monument in Washington, the summer Olympics in Athens, and the Democratic and Republican Party conventions in Boston and New York.
There were no major incidents at any of the events.
"As each event goes by, you worry a little more about those coming," said a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security.
A senior intelligence official, who also took part in the briefing, said "it will not be time to take a sigh of relief" even after the presidential inauguration in January because the threat would remain.
Asked why al-Qaeda would want to disrupt the US election, the officials insisted that the network had a political agenda going beyond the simple desire to spread fear and depress turnout.
But they declined to say if al-Qaeda was seeking to oust President George W Bush or to keep him in power.
"We know for a fact they don't care about President Bush," said the intelligence official. "They refer to him in less than glowing terms. But we don't know that they've formed an opinion of Senator (John) Kerry." |
