Washington and N.Y. Put on Alert

Al Qaeda Plotting Attacks on Financial Sectors, Officials Say

The federal government raised the terror alert level yesterday to orange for the financial services sectors in New York City, Washington and Newark, citing the discovery of remarkably detailed intelligence showing that al Qaeda operatives have been plotting for years to blow up specific buildings with car or truck bombs.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the newly acquired information points to five potential targets: the International Monetary Fund and World Bank headquarters in Washington; the New York Stock Exchange and Citigroup Center in New York; and the Prudential Financial building in Newark.

The intelligence shows that al Qaeda has been methodically casing those buildings, and perhaps others, since well before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and also since then, according to one senior U.S. intelligence official who briefed reporters on the alleged plot. Authorities said they do not know when the operatives were planning to carry out any of the bombings.

The surveillance, recounted in chilling detail in newly obtained documents, included the location of security desks and cameras in the buildings; traffic and pedestrian patterns surrounding them; employee and vehicle routines; the locations of nearby fire departments, police stations, libraries and schools; and what kinds of explosives would do the most damage to the structures.

U.S. officials said the operatives noted that one of the buildings had three male security guards but that only one carried a weapon. "Getting up to the higher floors is not very difficult if you go there midweek, as I did," one operative added.

The heightened alert, announced by Ridge at 2 p.m., included a level of detail unprecedented in previous warnings. It is the first time that Homeland Security officials have focused the government's color-coded threat system on specific geographic areas. The five earlier orange alerts -- which indicate a high risk of terrorist attack -- were applied to the nation as a whole, most recently on Dec. 31, 2003.

"The quality of this intelligence, based on multiple reporting streams in multiple locations, is rarely seen and it is alarming in both the amount and specificity of the information," Ridge said.

The alert comes as President Bush is under pressure from Democrats and from his opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), to show that the government has done everything possible to fend off another terrorist attack. Bush is to announce today his plans for reorganizing the nation's intelligence agencies in response to recent recommendations by the Sept. 11 commission.

In response to Ridge's announcement, authorities in Washington, Newark and New York scrambled to beef up security before government offices and financial markets opened this morning.

New York, which has remained under an orange alert since the Sept. 11 attacks, will host the Republican National Convention Aug. 30 to Sept. 2. Police teams and anti-terror squads will bar trucks from certain bridges, establish checkpoints throughout Manhattan and double security around key office buildings, including the Stock Exchange and Citigroup buildings mentioned in the federal alert. In Newark, heavily armed police set up posts around the 24-story Prudential headquarters.

In the District, police announced plans to stop and inspect cars and trucks around the IMF and World Bank buildings and other sensitive sites downtown, to activate additional surveillance cameras and to flood the areas with foot and car patrols. Authorities indicated that security would be tightened at other facilities, including the White House, Capitol, State Department and U.S. Federal Reserve Board, in case secondary targets were selected.

U.S. intelligence officials' sources of terrorist information are typically more vague and fragmentary. Officials said during briefings with reporters yesterday that the documents related to the latest suspected al Qaeda plot were among the most specific the government had received. But they said they believe that the plans had been in the works for years and contained no specific date for an attack.

In one example of detailed surveillance cited by a senior administration intelligence official, operatives logged the flow of pedestrians outside one targeted building at midday in the middle of a week. "Fourteen persons pass by every minute" on one side of the block, they concluded.

Other communications focused on security barricades, traffic patterns, the use of sewers as escape routes and the locations of nearby fire and police stations, schools and libraries, officials said. For one building, potential attackers discussed how visitors must sign a book telling where they are going, but "on Sunday there is no security. This is not the case on Saturday."