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Pakistan, the gift that keeps on giving. Pakistani forces have managed to arrest two more high ranking al Qaeda suspects in eastern Punjab province!
"In addition to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, whose bounty was $25 million, we have captured another most wanted suspect with a bounty on him running into the millions of dollars," the minister, Faisal Saleh Hayyat, said.
He said both suspects were of African origin but refused to identify them or their nationalities.
Four Egyptians and a Libyan on the FBI's list of most-wanted terrorists are believed to be in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Each of them has a $5 million bounty on his head in connection with the embassy bombings.
Osama bin Laden's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, is also from Egypt. He and the al-Qaida chief are believed hiding along the Pakistan-Afghan border, far from Punjab province.
Hayyat's announcement followed news that at least six al-Qaida suspects, including a Syrian, have been arrested in separate raids in recent days.
Kevin Drum is skeptical about the timing of all these arrests being accidental.
Given that hundreds of workers in New York and Washington and Newark have just been jerked around based on intelligence gleaned from the recent Ghailani arrest that turned out to be more than two years old, I am skeptical that these arrests will necessarily benefit our incumbent in any case. Any al Qaida arrest is a good thing, whenever it comes.
UPDATE: But now Newsday's Knut Royce is reporting that an al Qaeda operative has told British intelligence that an attack is planned for September 2.
The former senior National Security Council official said he was told by British intelligence that they are interrogating an al-Qaida operative who confirmed that financial institutions are being targeted and that an attack was planned for September," Royce reports. "The former NSC official, who asked to not be further identified, said that the al-Qaida operative in British custody, while confirming that financial institutions were at risk, did not know which financial institutions were being targeted. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
More: Blogger glassfrequency sends a provocative scenario put forward by former CIA and State department counterterrorism analyst Larry Johnson on PBS' The News Hour tonight:
"But our reaction to this, Ray, is setting up the ultimate cyber-terrorist attack where in the future all the terrorist has to do is put together a very elaborate plan-- well produced with some key graphics showing that they know about a target, have surveilled it, and then put a threat in it. All they have to do is phone it in, and we start shutting down cities. They don't even have to do anything to put themselves at risk of getting captured; yet what we are seeing is that they can shut down cities."
Larry Johnson
3 August 2004, PBS Newshour
(interviewed by Ray Suarez)
My initial response: An interesting scenario, but the fact is we didn't shut down our cities because of this threat. Indeed, people showed up at work at the very buildings that were described as targeted. How to balance real risk with risk of perceived risk?
Yet More: Even prominent bloggers are being targeted!