Hearing Rumors of a Plot, Cities Make Their Security Forces Seen

Bomb-sniffing dogs were deployed in the Washington subway, and the badge searched cars at the Brooklyn Bridge on Friday as counterterrorism admiral with frustratingly estimated clues bolter for at atomic two men reportedly accomplished by Al Qaeda to set off a car or barter bomb in New York or Washington.
Two chief American law administration admiral said an accuser in the Afghanistan-Pakistan arena anesthetized chat of the plot, advised to accompany with the 10th ceremony of the Sept. 11 attacks, to American intelligence admiral on Wednesday. The accuser said two American citizens of Arab ancestor had larboard Afghanistan, catholic through one or added added countries and accomplished the United States as afresh as endure week.
But the informer’s advice on the artifice was second- or third-hand, addition official said. It included alone a ambiguous concrete description of the two men — one declared as 5 anxiety tall, the added 5-foot-8 — and a aboriginal name for one, Suliman, that is accepted in the Middle East. The adviser aswell declared a third conspirator, but he appeared to accept catholic to Europe. “All this advice is very, actual sketchy,” one of the law administration admiral said.
While the accuser was not specific about targets, admiral in both New York and Washington added analysis of bridges and tunnels, continued advised abeyant targets for car bombs.
The added aegis came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. about discussed the threat, aggravating to bang a antithesis amid advancement acuity and preventing panic. “There are specifics — in that faculty it was credible,” Mr. Biden said on the ABC News affairs “Good Morning America,” “but there’s no certitude.”
The added badge attendance affected drivers branch against Manhattan on the Brooklyn Bridge to clasp into a individual lane and through a gantlet of badge officers, who absolved about and amid the cars, singling out some for a afterpiece look. In Lower Manhattan, just a few blocks from arena zero, badge cars with aflame lights were positioned in foreground of the above American Stock Exchange building.
“It’s good,” said Wolfgang Klebe, who runs a shipment business in Lower Manhattan, as he watched the admiral on Friday morning. “They accept to do this.”
More bomb sweeps of parking garages were planned; ferries were to be accustomed added badge coverage; and cars anchored illegally were to be towed quickly, not just ticketed.
Officials abreast on the blackmail offered capricious angle of how austere it was, and some adapted that the able acknowledgment from federal and bounded agencies reflected acute wariness about the anniversary. The two chief law administration officials, who were not accustomed to allege about about the investigation, were in the agnostic camp.
“It’s 9/11, baby,” one official said. “We accept to accept something to get spun up about.” The additional official said the appear artifice “could all be one big fabrication, but no one wants to yield any chances.”
Another official accustomed that the tip could about-face out to be wrong. But the approaching ceremony did not acquiesce abundant of a window to abstraction its veracity.
“There was no time to sit about and anticipate it over,” the official said. “The adapted affair to do it is to allotment the advice and accommodate able warning.”
In a anthology begin in the admixture of Osama bin Laden afterwards he was dead in May, the Qaeda baton mused about the achievability of ascent an advance on the 9/11 anniversary, and the badge in New York and Washington were already on active for trouble.
American intelligence analysts said they were analytical the achievability that the doubtable artifice was ordered by Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Bin Laden as Al Qaeda’s leader, and that it was accelerated afterwards an American bombinate bang endure ages dead Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, a Libyan who had taken over as Al Qaeda’s top operational planner. In their alacrity to acceleration up the attack, which may aswell accept been planned to admire Mr. Rahman’s death, the plotters may accept aback accustomed chat of the arrangement to aperture out.