Flight Groundings Lead Allies to Query Washington
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHING TON, Jan. 2 — British Airways canceled another flight to the United States on Friday as the Bush administration faced questions from American allies about the reliability of the intelligence information that has led to the recent rash of flight cancellations.

The British airline grounded a flight from London to Washington — the third cancellation over all in 24 hours — and canceled a flight scheduled for Saturday from London to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Seven international flights have now been canceled since last Saturday after the Bush administration began an aggressive approach to defending American airspace when the nation was put on orange or "high" alert on Dec. 21. Administration officials said no arrests had been made in connection with any of the more than a dozen international flights subjected to rigorous scrutiny. And officials have acknowledged that even now, they are uncertain whether they have succeeded in foiling a terrorist plot.

"I don't think we know yet, and we may never know," a senior administration official said.

The latest concern over the tighter security — perhaps unparalleled in commercial aviation history — was raised by Mexico on Friday. A spokesman for President Vicente Fox questioned decisions by the United States on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day to cancel Aeromexico's Flight 490 from Mexico City to Los Angeles. The spokesman, Agustin Gutiérrez Canet, said that armed Mexican agents had been scheduled to fly aboard the flights and that the authorities made special efforts to interrogate passengers closely and inspect luggage.

"Those revisions have found nothing suspicious," Mr. Gutiérrez said. "Where was the risk?"

In another indication of the turmoil resulting from the increased security measures, an American official said that the cancellation of the British Airways flights was not in response to United States safety concerns, but rather was prompted by the refusal of British pilots to fly with armed marshals on board. The United States put other nations on notice earlier this week that it would not allow certain suspicious flights into its airspace without armed marshals on board.

In addition to the flight cancellations, foreign airliners have been escorted into American airspace by F-16 military fighters, and a Mexican flight from Mexico City to Los Angeles was turned around in mid-air.

The events have left both domestic security officials and international travelers on edge over the prospect of another attack by Al Qaeda. American officials said they were determined to avoid the kind of missed warning signs that preceded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, even if it meant inconveniencing travelers.

Government officials refuse to talk about key details of their decisions to ground the flights because they are classified, but they say that the anxieties are driven by a confluence of factors indicating that another attack on the scale of the Sept. 11 hijackings might be in the works. And the White House's approach, the result of both cold analytical intelligence and gut-level emotion, helped set in motion the extraordinary security measures seen over the last 10 days.

Two days before an Air France flight to Los Angeles was to depart from Paris on Christmas Eve, President Bush's top national security advisers briefed him at the White House on their growing worries about the route, administration officials said.

American officials were picking up intelligence indicating terrorists might be on board that flight or others from Paris to Los Angeles. They had persuaded the French, despite initial resistance, to post armed marshals on board. But the Americans remained nervous and were considering urging the French to cancel the flight.

President Bush had one threshold question for Tom Ridge, his secretary for homeland security, as they met at the White House situation room on Dec. 22. "Would you let your son or daughter fly on that plane?" he asked Mr. Ridge, according to a senior administration official privy to the conversation.

"Absolutely not," the secretary responded. "Well," Mr. Bush said, "neither would I."

The two men and Mr. Bush's other advisers then agreed that if the threat remained, the French should be urged to cancel the Paris-to-Los Angeles flights over the Christmas holiday. Two days later, the French did just that.

But with that aggressive approach have come questions about the quality of the intelligence information. In the case of the Air France cancellations, for instance, the discovery of a name on the passenger manifest similar to that of a Tunisian pilot with possible extremist links ratcheted up concern. But officials said it turned out to be a case of mistaken identity; the name of the passenger was that of a child, a senior official said in an interview. Other apparent "hits" from American terror watch lists turned out to be an elderly Chinese woman who owned a restaurant and a Welsh insurance agent, an F.B.I. official said.

The level of intelligence "chatter" picked up by the American intelligence community, and used as a gauge of terrorist activity, had risen to alarming levels by the time Mr. Ridge raised the threat level, officials said. Electronic eavesdropping, monitoring of e-mail messages, and information from informers picked up snippets of suspicious references to flight numbers and cities, and it pointed up concern about specific flights as well, including London to Washington, Paris to Los Angeles, and Mexico City to Los Angeles, officials said. The holiday period was also a time of particular concern, in part because Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber," had tried to detonate an explosive on a flight from Paris to Miami on Dec. 22, 2001.

In the hours and days leading up to the Dec. 21 orange alert, the suspicious intelligence became louder, more credible and more specific, officials said. And it appeared to take a sudden upturn just before Dec. 21, surprising even some national security officials who said they had no reason to expect the alert level to increase in the day or two beforehand. By the time the alert was declared, officials said, they were deeply concerned that an international flight would be Al Qaeda's next means of attack on the United States.

Daniel Benjamin, a former counterterrorism specialist with the National Security Council, said he spoke with officials who "thought the orange alert was easily justified based on the available intelligence, and one person could even have imagined it going higher" to a red alert, which has never happened under the current threat system.

The French routes were among their biggest concerns, and intelligence pointed to the possibility of attacks on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, officials said.

Americans became even more concerned about the Paris-Los Angeles route as they began reviewing preliminary flight manifests from the Air France flights on Dec. 24 and Dec. 25.

"There were names on those manifests that caused concern because of hits on our databases. That's what caused the anxiety level," the senior government official said.

The passenger name that appeared to match the Tunisian pilot provoked particular concern, officials said, but investigators would not learn of the mistake until after the flights were grounded.

In the days leading up to the Christmastime flights to Los Angeles, French and American security officials exchanged information often hourly on the passengers scheduled to be on board, and the Americans persuaded the French, after vigorous lobbying, to post armed marshals on the flights, officials said. One French diplomat told the Americans that he was concerned that the Paris-Los Angeles flights could be disrupted for an extended period and that the public would see the issue as a result of more diplomatic friction between the two nations, according to an American official who spoke with the emissary.

While American officials have asserted tight control over how and when foreign flights can enter their airspace, their authority has come into question in recent days, as they have sought to balance national security and diplomatic concerns.

In Mexico, legislators expressed frustration about the Mexico City-Los Angeles cancellations on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, saying that they wanted Mexico's transportation minister to answer questions about the security agreements with the United States and about who would compensate Mexican airlines for any financial losses.

Victor Hugo Islas, a federal legislator from the central Mexican state of Puebla, told the newspaper Cronica: "We do not know for sure the reach of these agreements, but surely someone should compensate the Mexican airlines as well as the passengers who have lost reservations, hotels, business or even jobs over these decisions."

The American authorities have negotiated tougher security controls with the French, and they have also begun sending inspectors into Benito Juarez Airport in Mexico City to help put stricter measures into effect.

But there appear to be limits to how far other nations will go to accommodate American concerns.

In France, for instance, Dominique Bussereau, the state secretary in the transport ministry, said in a French radio interview on Friday that officials there would have to evaluate future requests from the United States for flight cancellations, and he said the French had turned down one such request this week.

"There was a flight that took place a few days ago that the United States didn't particularly want," Mr. Bussereau said. But French officials determined "that all the security measures had been taken, that all the checks made into the passengers were of such nature that the flight had all reason to travel, to fly," he said. French officials apologized to the passengers and allowed the flight to take off — "even if the American authorities didn't entirely agree," he said.

Ginger Thompson reported from Mexico City for this article, and John Tagliabue reported from Paris.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top

Sheesh. And you complain that I'm grumpy.

Good post.

This is the sign of grumpy? Bah! Your self restraint is admirable.

To hell with anyone who is trying to get into this country. Up yours! I say. We should slam the borders shut for 6 mos. No one in without a damn good reason and ALL the madatory requirements in place. In the meantime, there should be a huge 'round up' of any and all who are not here legally and out they go. Don't give a tinkers damn on the why's and why not's and don't want to hear any crying. The 'illegal' issue has been pandered to for too long. Time to start a new year with a new sweep of the broom. If it hurts someones delicate sensibilities then toughen the hell up and get over it. If it's inconvenient see above. The US is not responsible for your 'feelings' and complaining should be a useless gesture. Go to Mexico and bitch about their flag flying for a while, tell them they are wrong to fly it...are war mongers..etc..and that you want free housing, a job, free medical etc. Or, Germany, Russia, Japan, China, Africa etc. Just give it a shot and see what their reply to your 'demands' are.
Coffee...I need coffee! ;-)

I can not stand the way these people act!

On one hand they scream :
"The government should've done something to stop 9/11!"

On the other :
"The government should do nothing!"

MAKE UP YOUR MINDS!

The govenment did nothing, numbnuts, that's why we had 9/11, and the government is doing something to hopefully stop another 9/11.

What is so hard to understand?

Need ClueBat...

Here, here.

To qualify for the school, a soldier must already be an expert marksman, pass a physical examination and undergo a psychological screening ("To make sure they're not training a nut," Sergeant Davis said.) The rigorous course fails more than half of its students.

The training paid off on Dec. 18. Dusk was setting in here, and Sergeant Davis was wrapping up a counter-sniper mission when he spotted an armed Iraqi on a rooftop about 300 yards away. He said he knew the gunman was a sniper by the way he sneaked along the roofline to track a squad below from Sergeant Davis's Company B.

"The guy made a mistake when he silhouetted himself against the rooftop," said Sergeant Davis, who has 20/10 vision. "He was trying to look over to see where the guys were in the courtyard."

As the gunman rose from the shadows to fire, Sergeant Davis said he saw his head and then the distinctive shape of a Dragonov SVD Russian-made sniper rifle. The sergeant drew a bead on the shooter with his weapon of choice, an M-14 rifle equipped with a special optic sight that has crosshairs and a red aiming dot.

"I went ahead and engaged him and shot him one time to the chest," he said, matter of factly. "I watched him kick back, his rifle flew back, and I saw a little blood come out of his chest. It was a good hit."

Good shot, Sergeant.

Army snipers generally choose from four different weapons, depending on the mission. The standard M-24 sniper rifle is simple in design. It has an adjustable Kevlar stock, a thick stainless steel barrel, a mounted telescopic, day/night scope and is bolt action, rather than semiautomatic, like other sniper rifles. It sets up on a bipod and fires 7.62-millimeter ammunition, hitting targets up to 1,000 yards away.

In the desert, snipers wrap plastic bags or condoms over the gun muzzle to keep the sand out. They carry their weapons in padded green canvas bags. "We baby the hell out of them," Sergeant Davis said.

Most snipers are familiar with firearms even before joining the armed forces. Sergeant Davis and Specialist Wilson grew up on farms, and both owned their first rifles before they were 10. They fondly remember hunting deer as youngsters.

Both men are married and have children, and say they do not talk much about their work outside their tight-knit clan. "We try to get away from stereotypes that you're a psychotic gun nut running around, like the guy in D.C., or like in the movies, a cool-guy assassin," Sergeant Davis said.

There are not many targets these men dread, but in the shifting battlefield of Iraq, where seemingly everyone is armed, one candidate emerges. Would they ever shoot a child who aimed at them?

"I couldn't imagine that," said Specialist Wilson, a father of five.

But Sergeant Davis had a different view: "I'd shoot him, otherwise he'd shoot me. But I wouldn't feel good about it."

And if you found the bastard that convinced the kid to do it... are you listening Yasser?

The whole article is here at the NYT. Yep, you'll have to register. But I get maybe one email a month from 'em, so it ain't too bad.

Greyhawk also blogs this from a different perspective.

I could not be prouder of how our troops handle themselves. In reading your post of Dec 16 about the ambush, my first thought was remembering that these are the guys that Al Gore went to court over in an attempt to not allow their absentee ballots to be counted.

That's something to hold in reserve, in case Al ever decides to run again...

Good work on the part of the troops, but I sometimes wonder if the Canadian policy of never revealing publically the names of snipers is a better idea. In this case, they give the name and hometown of a specific sniper who participated in a specific action. Now, theoretically, scum affiliated with the islamofascists could use that info to harrass or harm his family or him. I recall hearing about specific snipers being threatened during the Bosnia fracas. One particular sniper from the French foreign legion had to be gotten out of country after he got a bunch of kills and the Bosnian Serbs put a 50 000 DM price on his head....
Still, the troops are doing good work.

How about a little 'jointness'? This is becoming more and more common for our helicopters pilots - getting what amounts to 'carrier qualified', whether it's the landing platform on a Frigate, a Marine assault carrier, or regular flat-tops. This one is a part of the 17th Aviation Brigade getting qual'ed on the waters near Korea. We'll know something is up when we hear SGT Hook talk about getting his birds carrier qualified!

Lastly, for you older vets out there... here is a pic of the view thru GenIII NVG's (night vision goggles). Remember Starlight scopes? What a difference, eh? Still battery hogs (one more thing to carry with you) but a heck of a lot lighter and smaller. We still own the night - but as these things get cheaper, that advantage will erode somewhat. But by then, we'll have the see-through-walls and hear-through-walls gear. Yes. I'm serious.

What is that? Looks like a self-propelled gun. Not an M109. Definitely not an Abrams tank. 155mm?

Hey, at least I know the difference between a tank and an armored, mobile, artillery piece. :)

Well, you know the difference, but you don't know your guns! That is an M109A6 Paladin.

I got a mixed result from seeing this.

Yay! that we kick ass and have cool stuff to kick ass with. And that we are alert and on patrol.

But, really, why on our soil? And airspace?

Damn terrorists.

I agree, John, crush them. One and all.

Russell - now that I know who comes in from there... what *is* Solarvoid?

Er, my vanity website!

Like a blog, but with forums.

Needed clever name, couldn't think anything, so I dinked around with smashing words together, and a friend suggested the name.

Lacking anything better, I used it.

Sounds ominous and world ending-esque, no? Solar void, no sun, game over, the end.

But no, just another web site full of hot air and ramblings! Ah, the power of the web.

Feel free to visit!

Leslie is an interesting character. A friend of mine was one of his troops when Leslie was the CO of 1RCHA at CFB Shilo. Leslie was a good man to work for. And the grandson of one of Canada's World War II Generals, General Andrew McNaughton.
The phrase 'Death tech' is one of the classic slang terms for Infanteer in the CF. A friend used to say his MOC was 031 Death Tech.