Paramilitary Police State & Private Prisons

U.S. to Warn Travelers: Be 'Vigilant' of Europe Terror Threats

October 2, 2010

Associated Press – The Obama administration will warn U.S. citizens to be vigilant as they travel in Europe, providing updated guidance prompted by al-Qaida threats, American and European officials told The Associated Press on Saturday.

Such a move could have negative implications for European tourism, business and diplomacy if travelers fear there's a possibility of terror attacks.

The State Department will issue a "travel alert" for Europe on Sunday morning that advises Americans to stay vigilant on the continent because of threat information, senior U.S. officials told the AP. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because a final decision has not been announced.

"This travel alert is a cumulative result of information we have received over an extended period," one senior administration official said. "We are constantly monitoring a range of threat streams and have monitored this and others for some time."

State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley declined to comment on the matter. But he said the administration remains focused on al-Qaida threats to U.S. interests and will take appropriate steps to protect Americans.

A European official briefed on the talks said the language in the U.S. alert is expected to be vague. It won't address a specific country or specific landmarks, the official said.

European and U.S. officials have not identified any specific targets that terrorists might be considering, the official said. Officials have called the threat credible but not specific. Officials have been concerned that terrorists may be plotting attacks in Europe with assault weapons on public places, similar to the deadly 2008 shooting spree in Mumbai, India.

On Friday, Sweden announced it has raised its threat alert to the highest level ever because of an increased threat of terror attacks. But Swedish security officials said there did not appear to be an immediate threat, nor did they cite any possible targets.

In Britain, the security level stood at "severe" — the second highest in a five-step scale — and there were no plans of raising it further, according to a British security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The U.S. has told European leaders that the State Department alert would be intended to raise the guidance to match the information about the would-be attack that surfaced last week, the European official said.

There had not been strong opposition to the proposed alert from European leaders, the European official said.

But some U.S. allies in Europe expressed concern that the U.S. guidance might include a warning for Americans to stay away from public places in Europe, saying that would be an overreaction to the threat information. Some administration officials agreed and the White House adamantly denied such a blanket warning was being considered.

Intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden is behind the terror plots to attack several European cities. If this is true, this would be the most operational role that bin Laden has played in plotting attacks since Sept. 11, 2001.

Eight Germans and two British brothers are at the heart of an al-Qaida-linked terror plot against European cities, but the plan is still in its early stages, with the suspects calling acquaintances in Europe to plan logistics, a Pakistani intelligence official said Thursday. One of the Britons died in a recent CIA missile strike, he said. The Pakistani official said the suspects are hiding in North Waziristan, a Pakistani tribal region where militancy is rife and where the U.S. has focused many of its drone-fired missile strikes.

"We remain focused on al-Qaida's interest in attacking us and attacking our allies," Crowley said. "We will do everything possible to thwart them and will take steps as appropriate."

A travel "alert" is less serious than a full "travel warning," which could have big implications. There are hundreds of thousands of Americans in Europe at any one time, including tourists, students and businesspeople.

While the government cannot stop people from traveling there or force them to return home, a formal travel warning could result in canceled airline and hotel bookings as well as deter non-U.S. travelers from going to Europe. In addition, many U.S. college and university study-abroad programs will not send students to countries for which a warning is in place for insurance and liability reasons.

Under a "no double standard" rule, the government is obliged to share threat information that it has given diplomats and other officials with the general public.

The Pentagon declined to say Saturday whether it had increased security levels at any of its European bases.

"As a matter of policy we don't discuss specific force protection measures or levels. Commanders continually evaluate the local security environment and take appropriate and prudent security measures to protect personnel and facilities," said Army Maj.Tanya Bradsher, a Defense Department spokeswoman.

The Italian Interior and Foreign Ministry, German Foreign Office, French Foreign Ministry, Interior Ministry, the national police and the Paris police all declined immediate comment. Calls to the Paris tourism office and the French government's tourist office in the United States went unanswered Saturday and there was no immediate response to e-mail requests for comment.

Absurd Terror Threat Arises in Mid-term Home Stretch

October 2, 2010

Infowars.com - Intelligence agencies — legendary for staging numerous false flag attacks — are warning that Osama bin Laden has issued instructions for Mumbai-style attack on three European targets.

Earlier in the week U.S. officials issued a warning that Osama and crew would strike once again. The new plot, emerging suspiciously close to U.S. mid-term elections and coinciding with the Pentagon’s illegal murder campaign in Pakistan, is said to “credible but non-specific.” The new plot was supposedly revealed by a suspect undergoing “interrogation” at the Bagram torture facility in Afghanistan.

“Investigators believe al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden signed off on a European attack plan, a separate law enforcement source said. But U.S. and international officials say they have seen no sign of an imminent attack,” CNN reported on September 29.

Osama bin Laden: CIA Asset

Osama bin Laden ran MAK (Maktab al-Khidamat), an organization created by Pakistan’s ISI at the behest of the CIA. It funneled money, weapons, and internationally recruited fighters into the war created in part by Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brezinski. Osama was closely tied to the Afghan warlord and ISI stooge Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who ran drugs for the CIA. In the 1980s, emissaries from the United States met with Osama. The CIA paid Osama to train the militant group Abu Sayyaf and others at his CIA-built camps in Afghanistan. In New York, Osama’s MAK operated the CIA-connected al-Kifah Refugee Center that was involved in the 1993 WTC bombing. The U.S. government would later call the al-Kifah charity the “precursor organization to al-Qaeda.”

MSNBC, the New Yorker, Le Monde, and other corporate media sources reported on these connections, but after September 11, 2001, the evidence was relegated to the memory hole and a new narrative was established.

Bin Laden Died in December, 2001

Osama bin Laden “died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication” in December, 2001, according to a report carried by none other than Fox News. The FBI, former Pakistan dictator Musharraf, Afghan puppet leader Hamid Karzai, Israeli intelligence, the late Benazir Bhutto, and many others have said Osama bin Laden is dead.

In a purported will published in a London-based Arab news magazine, al-Majalla, Osama allegedly instructed “mujahedeen everywhere” to “devote your efforts to purifying your groups from the agents and the cowards and those impostors who claim to be scholars amongst you,” in other words operatives working for the CIA, Mossad, and British intelligence.

CNN carried a report on the will on October 26, 2002, but the fact Osama is dead and buried is never mentioned when CNN publishes stories warning that the CIA created terror leader has issued a tape or warnings of attacks that never seem to occur.

Bin Laden: A Boogieman Designed to Perpetuate a Phony War on Terror

As David Ray Griffin notes, the phantom Osama is perpetually recycled to justify a war on terror designed to encompass a perpetually expanding array of targets. “Obama has appealed regularly to… intelligence estimates, which have invariably claimed that bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, somewhere along its border with Pakistan. This claim has been used to justify the extension of US military activity into Pakistan,” Griffin wrote last October. The “fake bin Laden tapes appear to be simply one part of an extensive propaganda operation, in which the US military intelligence is using tax dollars – illegally – to propagandize the American public, with the aim of furthering the militarization of America and its foreign policy.”

Earlier this year, the CIA admitted “creating a fake video in which intelligence officers dressed up as Osama Bin Laden and his cronies in an effort to defame the terrorist leader,” Paul Jospeh Watson wrote on May 25.

“This latest revelation bolsters evidence that the intelligence agencies, and perhaps more significantly, the military have been engaged in creating fake Bin Laden videos in the past.”

It is said Osama no longer produces video tapes because they may reveal his whereabouts. “Over recent years, bin Laden has issued audio tapes but no videos, after it emerged that the CIA was trying to identify where he was hiding by looking at the vegetation in videos he had released. In more than 30 audio and video tapes, he has warned European countries and the US about attacks and praised previous ones, although he has never talked of a preferred method,” reports the Telegraph.

Establishment Creates Fake Terror Threats for Political Gain

In July, a former senior adviser to Bill Clinton said that the only thing will rescue Obama’s presidency as his approval figures continue to plunge is a terror attack on the scale of Oklahoma City or 9/11. As Prison Planet noted July 14, Clinton was able to extinguish an anti-incumbent rebellion which was brewing in the mid 1990s by exploiting the OKC bombing to demonize his political enemies.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge wrote in his memoir last year that the neocon-infested Bush administration had raised the nation’s terror alert level in the days before the 2004 presidential election.

“An election-eve drama was being played out at the highest levels of our government” after Osama bin Laden released a pre-election message critical of Bush, Ridge writes. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld strongly advocated raising the security threat level to “orange,” even though Ridge believed a threatening message “should not be the sole reason to elevate the threat level,” CNN reported.