October 07, 2004

Everything's going to be just fine, authorities say

From the 9/30 San Diego Union-Tribune story "No threat seen to district; children are safe, police say":

A man arrested by U.S. authorities in Iraq had a computer disk in his possession containing a public report downloaded from a U.S. Department of Education Web site on crisis planning in school districts, including San Diego Unified...

That report has a few quote from authorities saying there's no danger, San Diego wasn't specifically targeted, etc. etc.

Now, from ABC's 10/7 report "School Warning":

Schools in six states in particular are being watched closely based on information uncovered by the U.S. military in Baghdad this summer, law enforcement and education officials told ABC News.

A man described as an Iraqi insurgent involved in anti-coalition activities had downloaded school floor plans and safety and security information about elementary and high schools in the six states, according to officials...

There's nothing in that report where authorities downplay the risk as in the first report. The ABC report names six specific towns in FL, OR, GA, MI, and NJ, but they fail to name the two towns in California.

Nevertheless, if this really happened, they would seem to refer to the same computer disk. In the first report the disk just contains a generic report, in the second it contains floor plans for specific schools. The discrepancies between the two reports are certainly curious.

UPDATE: As pointed out here, today's CNN report ("Disks in Iraq hold details about U.S. schools") says this: "the material was associated with a person in Iraq, and it could not be established that this person had any ties to terrorism. He did have a connection to civic groups doing planning for schools in Iraq." Further, TPM says that the states involved are swing states, which isn't correct for all of them.

UPDATE 2: Here's a Boston Globe report with the school details of the ABC report and the assurances that nothing's wrong of the SDUT report.

Posted to Terrorism at October 7, 2004 10:29 PM

Comments

There could be a beslan-type situation in the making, all because the government can't bring itself to be strict on the foreign criminals running wild in the country. The more we tolerate them, the less they respect us. The more immigration visas are handed out, the louder the 3rd world cries that America is racist.

Posted by: John S Bolton at October 8, 2004 04:26 PM