It looks like something might be up
There appear to be a number of signs that this year’s annual warning from Adam Gadahn might possibly have a bit of substance behind it. For example, the New York City police department went into high gear yesterday after Debka reported a dirty bomb threat against NYC, LA, and Miami; now police activities are being “scaled back.” The editor of Debka made the salient point to Ynet that the NYC police were not acting on Debka’s report alone:
Be it true or false, imaginary or realistic, DEBKAfile’s Giora Shamis can rest easy on Saturday, after having spun New York police into a frenzy following a Debka report that al-Qaeda might be plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the city…”The New York Police didn’t have to take my information seriously,” he said. “They had other information, additional to ours.”…”We never know if the threat is real or not, but if you follow these publications for years, you can get a feel for whether the threat is serious or not. This time this threat seemed -– due to the intensiveness of the exchange of messages — to be more serious than others.”
Interestingly, Bill Roggio reports that al Qaeda and Taliban training camps — the kind the US destroyed in the aftermath of 9/11 — have been emptying out:
The Fourth Rail interviewed a senior US military intelligence official and a US military officer, both of whom are familiar with the situation in the Northwest Frontier Province and wish to remain anonymous. The sources confirmed Mr. Shahzad’s information concerning the al Qaeda and Taliban camps in North Waziristan and the Taliban’s reorganization is accurate. Both sources are particularly concerned about the implications of the emptying of the camps…Mr. Shahzad reported there were 29 al Qaeda and Taliban camps in North and South Waziristan, and all but one “have been dismantled, apart from one run by hardline Islamist Mullah Abdul Khaliq.”…
The al Qaeda and Taliban personnel abandoned the 28 camps after “the US had presented Islamabad with a dossier detailing the location of the bases as advance information on likely US targets,” Mr. Shahzad reported….”This is one of the reasons that we are worried about a major CONUS [Continental United States] attack,” the senior military intelligence source told The Fourth Rail, noting the recent influx of news of terror cells attempting to penetrate the US. “If they evacuated their bases, they almost certainly did so out of fear of more than just the Pakistani army.”
Meanwhile, DHS reports increased penetration attempts from both Canada and Mexico, via ABC:
“Tunnels under U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico serve primarily as conduits for transporting illicit drugs into the United States. In addition, reliable reporting indicates that some tunnels also are used for alien smuggling, including special interest aliens.”…In its own report, “Special Assessment: Underground Tunnels: A Border Security Threat,” DHS noted that 65 tunnels have been discovered since 1990 — all but one originating in Mexico — and the pace of tunneling or the discovery of tunneling appears to be accelerating…
Canadian officials meanwhile have issued a warning that “several…counterfeit visas…have been intercepted at Pearson International Airport in Toronto.”…”The counterfeits were detected in the possession of nationals of Ukraine, Georgia and Azerbaijan, and most recently, nationals of India. The counterfeits, purportedly issued in Kiev and Chandigarh, bear serial numbers starting with ‘A043283.’”
Finally, some odd things have been happening in Washington as well. The Republican administration is suddenly making noises about taking border enforcement seriously, and the Democratic Congress went along with warrantless domestic surveillance with relatively few complaints. Happenstance, coincidence, or other? (And, by the way, should we start thinking about August 22 again, as Bernard Lewis suggested last year?)