Briefcase baffles authorities

[Snazzy]

Briefcase baffles authorities
Mysterious parcel alarms Spotsylvania lawmen

By KARI PUGH

Date published: 6/30/2004

The CIA wouldn't confirm or deny. The FBI said it wasn't sure where it came from.

Spotsylvania County deputies didn't care, they were just glad the contents of the mysterious black briefcase weren't the real thing.

...

When a deputy took a peek inside, he saw terrorism manuals, vials marked as biological agents and files upon files in Arabic, Sheriff Howard Smith said yesterday.

The deputy quickly called for backup, set up a perimeter around the area and had his superiors notify the FBI.

When an agent from the FBI's Domestic Terrorism Group arrived, he immediately recognized the briefcase as a training aid. He told authorities he thought it probably belonged to the CIA.

....

http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2004/062004/06302004/1416153

(FBI eventually says it was theirs. For the FBI is always losing things and assorted mock terror clips news file)

[Snazzy]

1. But wait! There's more missing briefcases--The Aussies do it too

You'd think I had done a search on missing briefcases. Rest assured, I had not:

Spy sent home after briefcase bungle
An Australian intelligence officer is being sent home from Washington after he temporarily misplaced a briefcase containing classified US documents.

It is understood the briefcase was accidentally left in an office at the US Congress building and was later returned to the Australian embassy.

The Department of Foreign Affairs says the man works for the Office of National Assessments (ONA) and will return to Australia shortly because of the security breach.

...


"It certainly isn't an incident that would engender further confidence," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200406/s1143769.htm

Edit: more at Yahoo/AFP: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1512&ncid=733&e=2&u=/afp/20040630/wl_afp/australia_us_spy

[Snazzy]

2. And in NY ... sticking with the theme here

Counterterror props cause bomb scare
By WILL DAVID
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: June 30, 2004)

City police defused a brief bomb scare at the Regency Hotel on Tuckahoe Road yesterday when five suspicious suitcases believed to contain explosives turned out to be props from a state agency teaching counterterrorism classes in the area.

The suitcases had been stolen from the trunk of the car of the New York state Division of Criminal Justice Services instructor who was teaching the classes at the police academy in Valhalla, but staying at the Marriott Hotel in Tarrytown.

The instructor's personal belongings also were stolen, said Jessica Scaperotti, a spokeswoman for the Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Yonkers police recovered the suitcases, which had training materials. There were no explosives, police said. The instructor's personal property was not found.

....

http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/063004/b04w30bombags.html

[shockingelk]

4. Three separate terrorism/espionage related suitcases found today!

If today is a typical day, each day 1 out of every two billion people find a lost terrorism/espinoge related suitcase.

55 years is about 20,000 days. Assuming 55 as an average global life span and each person is equally likely to find a terrorism/espionage related suitcase on any given day, each of us has a 1/200,000 chance of finding a terrorism/espionage related suitcase sometime during their lives.

The population of the United States is about 300,000,000. Each year, one can expect nearly 54 terrorism/espionage related suitcases to be found by US citizens ((300 million/2 billion) * 365).

The Pentagon keeps claiming that there are about 5,000 insurgents in Iraq, and each month, they report arresting 1,000-2,000 insurgents. Taking the average, there are about 3,500 insurgents in Iraq who are not arrested each month. Thankfully, we can conclude that in a given month, there is only a 0.005% (1 out of 20,000) chance that an insurgent terrorist in Iraq finds a terrorism/espionage related suitcase and is not arrested by coalition forces.

[gatlingforme]

3. the feds are human too......I laughed when the agent said it was

probably the CIA's LOL,,,, funny :P

[Nay]

5. Remember that John O'Neill had his briefcase stolen, too --

while it was in a ROOMFUL of FBI agents.

[stickdog]

6. How in the hell do you "lose" a briefcase in the woods behind

someone's house in a residential area?

[denverbill]

7. Did it have 'Property of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden' on it?

In English?