Capital Threat: Al Qaeda Threat Led to London/DC Flight Cancellations- ABC

[VolcanoJen]

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Travel/Investigation/canceled_flights_040102-1.html

Hmmm. Very long article, but interesting background info. Emphasis mine... how can "hard intelligence" come from source whose "credibility US officials have been unable to confirm"?

Excerpts:

On New Year's Day and again today, British Airways cancelled Flight 223 from Heathrow to Washington, and the return flight from Washington to London was canceled Thursday evening, as terror concerns continue to disrupt international air travel.

ABCNEWS has learned that the cancellations were due to information from a "human source" overseas and analysis of other intelligence. The human source, whose credibility U.S. officials have been unable to confirm, said plans were in place to specifically take over Flight 223 and crash it into Washington, D.C.

<snip>

British defense analyst Paul Beaver also said said intelligence sources tell him that Flight 223 has been specifically targeted by terrorists, with the goal being an attack on Washington.

"There seems to be very hard intelligence coming from the United States that there is a serious threat to Flight 223 — the British Airways flight," Beaver said. "It's flight related, not passenger related or freight related. And this is related to something which may be targeted in the Washington area — some sort of spectacular… either flying the aircraft into something or detonating it over Washington itself."

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. They already admited that the Air France

flights they made a mistake...

Look they are tryng to justify their existence and the orange alert

[ewagner]

2. My suspicion is

the tactic being used is to add some chaos to the system which would thwart any plans being made by terrorists. Terrorism depends on knowing routines and a certain measure of predictibility. If the feds can take away some of the routine and add uncertainty to the mix, it will hinder planning.

[asjr]

3. Do you think

it might be a "terraist" from Niger planning to take a yellow cake to the WH?