Giving the terrorists ideas

[AOPiLaLa]

Okay, does anyone else feel that the news media is just giving the terrorists more ideas what to do? I was watching the "Today's" show yesterday and Senator Frist is on talking about the way to REALLY hurt us was to go for our food supply and then he cited a case in Iowa(I think) where they poisioned 600 people and he pretty much gave instructions on how to do it. Do you think Bin Laden was scribbling as fast as he could? I am all for being informed and I think the media does a great job with that, but I am just scared they are feeding our fears, as well as giving the terrorists more ideas on what scares us the most. Anyone else feel that way?

[SigmaChiCard]

though it seems this way, I don't feel it's the case. I'd pondered it before as well. Actually, it's giving the Americans who wish to F#@$ with the USA ideas, like I wouldn't be surprised if supplementary schools get quarantined for gold medal flower. Kinda of like called in bomb threats, that obviously are higher in call volume in than real threats. So psuedo-threats will come from it more due to the medias coverage, but the media isn't really saying too much ' wonder if they'll...." it's more, 'be prepared for....it's coming." you know?

[aggieAXO]

yes AOPi LaL a I am with you. I feel like sometimes the media implants things into peoples heads. Though I am sure the terrorists have thought of most of the stuff they talk about. However, I feel it may give them the idea of what we most worry about, then maybe they make a top 10 list of what to do to us.
I don't get people and there sick practical jokes-we have had so many freakin false alarms in Austin/surrounding areas-and they think its people just trying to scare us-some of the things they have found are flour, I think cornstarch-our own people doing this-sick I tell you!!!! Or maybe its the terrorist trying to drive us all batty. I still open my mail with no gloves and no mask and damnit will continue to do this or I will feel that they have won.
(of course all I get are bills and as someone said earlier-not likely the phone company is going to try and kill us or they won't get paid)

[moe.ron]

Originally posted by SigmaChiCard
though it seems this way, I don't feel it's the case. I'd pondered it before as well. Actually, it's giving the Americans who wish to F#@$ with the USA ideas, like I wouldn't be surprised if supplementary schools get quarantined for gold medal flower. Kinda of like called in bomb threats, that obviously are higher in call volume in than real threats. So psuedo-threats will come from it more due to the medias coverage, but the media isn't really saying too much ' wonder if they'll...." it's more, 'be prepared for....it's coming." you know?

You right, with our attention toward "Islamic terrorist," maybe some homegrown terrorist are taking ideas from the different "experts" and buying Russians sciencetist. Let's hope there won't be another McVeigh.

[The1calledTKE]

Yes they give the terrorist ideas but I also think if they bring out all the possiblites of terrorism then we can better protect ourselves and watch out for it.

[James]

The idea of crashing a plane into a government building to cause mayhem was just written a few years ago in Tom Clancy's huge best seller, The Sum of All Fears.
I thinky they wiped out the capitol building in the book . . . life is stranger than fiction.

[Hootie]

Originally posted by James
life is stranger than fiction.

Or is it life imitating art?!?!?!

[Miami1839]

I do believe sometimes that the press does go a little overboard in covering stories. However, I do believe it is their job to an extent to keep us informed(within reason and for them to exercise proper judgement) so that we know whats going on to protect our safety. I do think they are doing a better job than Operation Desert Storm but really I'm not sure if you can compare because the operation we are in now is totally different than any other conflict in the past. I do believe that the anthrax hysteria and the hype on what is happening next is getting out of hand but I think its been decently measured given whats happened to all of us. I mean our government is still here, democracy is alive and well, we still have an economy, and our institutions are still functioning. We are still working. Even though many companies have laid off staff. Again, I think the government and the media are doing a decent job. However, I think the main thing is they need to exercise discretion before covering material. Its sad to think we spent so much time on Monica Lewinsky and Gary Condit instead of spending that time on more world related issues.

Kevin

[moe.ron]

FBI and CIA Suspect Domestic Extremists
Officials Doubt Any Links to Bin Laden

By Bob Woodward and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, October 27, 2001; Page A01

Top FBI and CIA officials believe that the anthrax attacks on
Washington, New York and Florida are likely the work of one or more
extremists in the United States who are probably not connected to
Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization, government
officials said yesterday.

Senior officials also are increasingly concerned that the bioterrorism
is diverting public attention from the larger threat posed by bin
Laden and his network, who are believed to be planning a second wave
of attacks against U.S. interests here or abroad that could come at
any time, officials said.

None of the 60 to 80 threat reports gathered daily by U.S.
intelligence agencies has connected the envelopes containing anthrax
spores to al Qaeda or other known organized terrorist groups, and the
evidence gleaned from the spore samples so far provides no solid link
to a foreign government or laboratory, several officials said.

"Everything seems to lean toward a domestic source," one senior
official said. "Nothing seems to fit with an overseas terrorist type
operation."

The FBI and U.S. Postal Inspection Service are considering a wide
range of domestic possibilities, including associates of right-wing
hate groups and U.S. residents sympathetic to the causes of Islamic
extremists. But investigators have no clear suspects, and are not even
certain whether there are other undetected letters that contained the
deadly microbe.

But federal health officials said yesterday that a new case of
pulmonary anthrax in a man who worked at a State Department mail
facility in Northern Virginia has persuaded them that more than one
contaminated letter may have been sent to the Washington area. Health
experts previously believed that a single letter, sent to the office
of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), likely caused
all the anthrax reports in the Washington area as it came in contact
with other pieces of mail in the system.

Now the "working hypothesis would be that this is not
cross-contamination," said Jeffrey Koplan, director of the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. "There is not enough infectious
material from cross-contamination to do that."

However, ongoing searches of truckloads of undelivered mail to the
U.S. Capitol and other government buildings has turned up no other
letters laced with anthrax bacteria, leading FBI officials to assume
that the Daschle letter may still be the only local source. Two
employees at the U.S. Postal Service's Brentwood facility in
Washington have died from inhaling the lethal bacteria, and three
other local postal workers have contracted inhalational anthrax.

"This envelope, Daschle's envelope, is not watertight or airtight or
anything like that," one law enforcement official said. "It's porous.
At one or two microns, there's plenty of room for the spores to
escape."

Although there is consensus at the FBI and CIA that al Qaeda
associates are planning more serious attacks, "nobody believes the
anthrax scare we are going through is" the next wave of terrorism, one
senior official said. "There is no intelligence on it and it does not
fit any [al Qaeda] pattern."

No links between known foreign terrorist groups and the anthrax
letters have shown up on the daily Top Secret Threat Matrix, which
includes the latest raw intelligence on potential bombings, hijackings
or other terrorist attacks, one official said. Though "lots of things
are alarming" on the list, there is little agreement on how, when or
where an attack might be launched, officials said.

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III warned earlier this week that
additional terror attacks are a "distinct possibility."

President Bush and other top U.S. officials have publicly voiced their
suspicion that bin Laden and al Qaeda -- accused of carrying out the
Sept. 11 suicide assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon --
may be responsible for the anthrax mailings.

But Mueller, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other law
enforcement officials have said they have discovered no links between
the mailings and bin Laden. Authorities, speaking on condition of
anonymity yesterday, said they are increasingly doubtful that any
connections will be found.

One official said the only significant clue raising the possibility of
foreign terrorist involvement is the conclusion of FBI behavioral
scientists, who believe that whoever wrote the three letters delivered
to Daschle, NBC News and the New York Post did not learn English as a
first language.

But the writer could have lived in this country for some time, and the
other evidence gathered so far points away from a foreign source,
several officials said.

The anti-Israel message in the anthrax letters and bin Laden's
statements are echoed by U.S. extremist groups, said Rabbi Abraham
Cooper, associate director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los
Angeles.

One group, Aryan Action, praises the Sept. 11 attacks on its Web site
and declares: "Either you're fighting with the jews against al Qaeda,
or you support al Qaeda fighting against the jews."

Cooper said a meeting this year in Beirut was attended by neo-Nazis
and Islamic extremists united in their hatred of Jews. "Some
extremists are now globalized," he said.

White supremacists have been linked with anthrax in the past, but not
in relation to an attack.

Larry Wayne Harris, an Ohio microbiologist and former member of the
Aryan Nations, was convicted of wire fraud in 1997 after he obtained
three vials of bubonic plague germs through the mail. He was arrested
the next year near Las Vegas when the FBI acted on a tip that he was
carrying anthrax. But agents found harmless anthrax vaccine in the
trunk of his car.

Cooper and officials at the Southern Poverty Law Project, which
monitors U.S. hate groups, said they have seen no evidence of a
domestic group capable of launching a sophisticated anthrax attack.

One of the challenges that a would-be terrorist faces is learning how
to alter the anthrax so that it will float in the air and disperse
widely. The Washington Post reported this week that the spores in the
Daschle letter had been treated with a chemical additive using
technology so sophisticated that it almost certainly came from the
United States, Iraq or the former Soviet Union.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said yesterday, however, that
investigators believe a broad range of people are capable of the
crime. "The qualityanthrax sent to Senator Daschle's office could be
produced by a Ph.D. microbiologist and a sophisticated laboratory," he
told reporters.

U.S. officials said the evidence so far does not point to either
Russia or Iraq. However, FBI checks of private and government
laboratories in the United States have not yet revealed any missing
anthrax stockpiles, disgruntled scientists or other suspicious
circumstances, one top official said.

Koplan, the CDC director, said he suspects more than one letter was
involved based on his understanding of how difficult it is to contract
inhalational anthrax. To cause the disease, 8,000 to 10,000 anthrax
spores must enter a person's lungs.

Although some officials said it is possible for that many spores to
have sloughed off the Daschle letter onto another piece of mail,
Koplan said that is hard to imagine. "We all think that would be
highly unlikely to virtually impossible," he said.

Koplan speculated that there may have been multiple mailings and that
"there may be several places within the federal government that have
been deemed targets."

By contrast, the minuscule amounts of anthrax bacteria discovered at
Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the CIA "may well represent
cross-contamination," Koplan said.

William C. Patrick, who is retired from the U.S. Army installation at
Fort Detrick, Md., said extensive studies show that once anthrax
spores hit the ground or other surfaces they stick, and are very hard
to "re-aerosolize.

There's a theoretical possibility that a few spores picked up by an
envelope might cause a skin anthrax infection, but a case of
inhalational anthrax "is highly unlikely," Patrick said.

Staff writers David Brown, Ceci Connolly, Ellen Nakashima and Peter
Slevin and researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.

[AKAtude]

Like my husband has been saying for the past several weeks:
"Do they think the terrorists don't watch television?"

Sometimes I cringe when I hear them saying certain things, but like someone said before maybe they have already thought of it to begin with. I just think since this is "a different kind of war", the media should show a little more restrait and report with caution. As an alum with a journalism degree, my professors would cringe to hear me say that. I guess that's why I couldn't be a journalist afterall.

[DeltAlum]

After spending most of my life working in TV newsrooms, I'm finally really PO'd at our media.

They say we're "Terrorized."

When I think of terrorized, I think of people with their eyes super wide, running around in circles shouting and not knowing what to do -- nearly paralyzed with fear.

Do you feel that way? I don't. I watch things more closely. I think a little more about doing certain things.

But I'm not terrorized.

The people I see on the street don't look terrorized to me.

Maybe if I read the word in the paper or hear it on TV or radio so many times in the future, I'll break down and panic.

In the interim, I think I'll just go on about my life.

By the way, I think the Clancy book was "Debt of Honor." In "Sum of All Fears," I think he nuked the new NFL stadium in Denver.

[James]

I may stand corrected in the eyes of God and my peers.)