January 8, 2002 Posted: 10:48 PM
EST (0348 GMT)
By Jeanne Meserve
CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- New voluntary guidelines to protect the nation's
food supply against intentional contamination by terrorists or others
are to be published this week by the Food and Drug Administration.
"The guidelines are not everything that can be done, but they are
important steps that will reduce the risk," said Joseph Levitt, the
FDA's food safety chief.
The FDA developed the guidelines with help from the Food Security
Alliance, a consortium of food trade associations.
The recommendations, which go to food producers, processors,
transporters and retailers, include: -- Checking the criminal
backgrounds and immigration status of all employees
-- Developing an identification system color-coded by area of
authorized access
-- Watching out for employees who stay at work unusually late and try
to get access to files, information or areas of the facility outside
their areas of responsibility. There also are suggestions for improving
the physical security of ingredients and products. An FDA spokesman
described these as "common-sense measures" that refocus attention from
accidental bacterial contamination to intentional tampering.
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson has said that
security of the food supply is his No. 1 concern.
Watchdog groups say the guidelines fall short and the agencies
responsible for food inspection need more money and more power.
The guidelines are to be published in the Federal Register.
Officials blame "overseas terrorism"
for attacks
September 12, 2001 Posted: 12:10 PM EDT (1610 GMT)
By National Security Correspondent David Ensor CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- United States officials say their "working
assumption" is that the attacks in New York and Washington are acts of
"overseas terrorism," and that they cannot rule out additional attacks.
Officials say they had no intelligence beforehand that a massive
terrorist plot was underway.
There have been a number of denials of responsibility by Palestinian
groups and by the al Qaeda group headed by fugitive Saudi accused
terrorist Osama bin Laden. U.S. officials say they have no credible
claim of responsibility.
A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency said the CIA operations
center has been moved to an undisclosed location. The headquarters
building in Langley, Virginia has been evacuated of all but essential
personnel.
A spokesman at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland
said the NSA has a "heightened security posture" and that all
non-essential personnel have been sent home.
US intelligence officials say they are contacting all their sources and
going through intelligence intercepts searching for evidence as to who
may have organized the attacks.
"We are looking for any shred of information that could help", an
official said.
Korean
jet in 9/11 'hijack' scare
From
Patty Davis
CNN
August
14, 2002
WASHINGTON (CNN) --On
the day of the September terror attacks on New York and Washington last
year, it has emerged that on the other side of the United States
another 200 lives were also in jeopardy.
Just hours after the planes
hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Korean Air Flight 85,
originally destined for New York, was preparing for a refueling stop in
Anchorage, Alaska.
As the plane came into U.S.
airspace, the pilot transmitted the letters "H J K" to Korean Airlines
operations.
"H J K" in air traffic-speak
stands for hijack.
ARINC, the U.S. company that
handles civil aviation radio traffic, received the transmission and
passed it on to the Federal Aviation Administration.
When U.S. air traffic
control asked the pilot to verify a hijacking was under way, the pilot
squawked the hijack code on the plane's transponder.
Worried the plane was in
hostile hands the North American defense command, NORAD, scrambled jets
to investigate and, if necessary, shoot down the Boeing 747 with nearly
200 passengers on board.
Frenzy
The scramble in the sky caused a frenzy on the
ground. Alaska's governor ordered the Valdez pipeline
terminal and state office buildings evacuated.
The Korean Air jet was still squawking the hijack code when
the military jets made visual contact with the pilots.
Under a military jet escort, the pilots cooperated with orders
to land at an airport in the nearby Whitehorse Airport in Canada's
Yukon territory.
Still unsure if there was a hijacking in progress, the Royal
Canadian mounted police boarded the plane with guns drawn.
But it proved a false alarm.
Korean Air and the FAA say it was a miscommunication between
the pilot and an air traffic control center made jumpy by the events
earlier that day.
A spokesman for Alaska's governor says "no one was going to
take anything like that lightly on September 11."
"It just goes to show you we were all terrorized by what was
going on back east."
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http://edition.cnn.com/2002/US/08/14/alaska.sept11/index.html |
Man allegedly in
al-Qaida plot to bomb mall
Ashcroft details charges against
Somali man living in Ohio
NBC News and news services Updated:
12:26 p.m. ET June 14, 2004
WASHINGTON - A Columbus, Ohio, man has been charged with participating
in an al-Qaida plot to blow up an Ohio shopping mall, Attorney General
John Ashcroft announced Monday.
"The American heartland was targeted for death and destruction by an
al-Qaida cell," Ashcroft said at a news conference announcing the
four-count indictment of 32-year-old Nuradin Abdi, who originally is
from Somalia.
A four-count indictment returned by a criminal grand jury in Columbus
and unsealed on Monday charges that Abdi conspired with admitted
al-Qaida member Iyman Faris and others to detonate a bomb at the
unidentified shopping mall in the Columbus area after he obtained
military-style training in Ethiopia.
Immigration document fraud also alleged
Abdi also is charged with fraud and misuse of documents by claiming
that he had been granted valid asylum status in the United States. In
fact, prosecutors say, he obtained that refugee document under false
pretenses.
There also is one count each of conspiracy to provide material support
to terrorists and conspiracy to provide material support to a
designated foreign terrorist organization, in this case al-Qaida.
The charges against Abdi, who has been in custody since November on
immigration-related violations, were handed up by the grand jury last
Thursday.
Each count of the terrorism related charges carries a maximum 30-year
sentence and the immigration charges carry maximum penalties of 25
years behind bars, Ashcroft said.
A government motion seeking to keep Abdi in detention says he returned
to the United States from Africa in March 2000 and was met at the
airport in Columbus by Faris. Those two and other unidentified
coconspirators were involved in the alleged shopping mall plot,
prosecutors say.
Secret travel to Africa charged
One of the immigration charges contends that Abdi concealed his true
destination when he applied on April 27, 1999, for a U.S. travel
document. He said he was going to Germany and Saudi Arabia to visit
Mecca and relatives.
In fact, “as the defendant well knew, he planned to travel to Ogaden,
Ethiopia, for the purpose of obtaining military-style training in
preparation for violent Jihad,” the indictment says.
The training allegedly included use of guns, bombs and guerrilla
warfare.
Faris, 34, is serving a 20-year federal sentence after pleading guilty
last June to providing material support to al-Qaida. Faris, an
Ohio-based truck driver originally from Kashmir, admitted plotting to
sever the cables supporting the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and to
derail trains in New York or Washington.
Neither of those plots came to fruition.
Faris had received instructions from top al-Qaida leader Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed for what might have been a second wave of attacks to follow
those of Sept. 11, 2001, investigators say. Mohammed, the alleged
mastermind of the hijackings, is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed
overseas location.
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