WASHINGTON Officials: Vegas was the target of terror

Officials are suspicious of people who didn't show up for a canceled flight.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- U.S. government officials said Thursday they believe some of the passengers boarding one of the three Air France flights from Paris to Los Angeles that were canceled because of security concerns this week might have intended to hijack it and crash land in Las Vegas.
Police in Paris questioned 13 people who had checked in for two Air France flights that were canceled Christmas Eve because of a terror warning from U.S. authorities, but no evidence of wrongdoing was found, the French Interior Ministry said. All 13 were released.
Some didn't show
But U.S. officials said they remain suspicious about some passengers who did not show up at the airport to claim their seats on the ultimately aborted Flight 68 from Paris to Los Angeles. One of those who did not appear for the Christmas Eve flight apparently is a trained pilot, one U.S. official said.
"We still have an interest in talking to those people who didn't show up," said one American official knowledgable about the investigation. "There might be more to come on this."
Despite French statements suggesting some American fears about the Air France flights were groundless, U.S. government officials said they believe they might have averted a terrorist attack by arranging for the flights' cancellation. Officials said they feared Al-Qaida operatives planned to hijack one of the flights and use the plane as a missile to attack a site on or near its route.
Other terror plots
Moreover, American officials said that intelligence indicators suggest that Al-Qaida might have set other terrorist operations in motion that do not involve aviation and are not centered in California. As on other occasions when terrorist fears are heightened, U.S. officials said their main concern is that Al-Qaida might use a chemical or biological weapon, or a radiological "dirty" bomb.
"Our fear is that other things are going on" that have nothing to do with jetliner flights in or out of U.S. airports, said one U.S. official briefed on high-level intelligence. "The concern is that there still could be a lot of activity that was under way."
Another government official with access to the classified reports said U.S. security officials "are really concerned something major will happen" despite the cancellation of the three incoming and three outgoing Air France flights between Paris and Los Angeles on Wednesday and Thursday. One scenario embraced by a number of U.S. security officials is that Al-Qaida operatives were in the final stages of planning an attack in this country, and were awaiting final direction from Al-Qaida superiors to proceed.
"Government people hope that by deploying, they'll shut down whatever might have been in motion," the official said.
In Paris, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin announced Thursday that Air France would operate its normal schedule today. "The grounded flights can be resumed," he said in a prepared statement.
U.S. officials have said that they passed on to the French government names of travelers they suspected might commandeer the planes on the Paris-Los Angeles route in a terror attack.
Seven detained
Seven of the questioned people had checked in at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport for Air France Flight 68 on Wednesday, according to a French official. He identified them as four Americans, one German, one French citizen and one Belgian.
The people were taken aside and questioned extensively by police, the official said. Their baggage was searched. But no sign of terror connections was found, he said, and all had been released by 7 a.m. Paris time Thursday. Six other passengers who showed up for flight 70 to Los Angeles were also questioned and released.
The French official called the cancellations a "nonevent." He added, "There is no danger ... And if there was any, specific measures would be taken."
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, American civilian and military air traffic controllers on the ground scrutinize the routes flown by commercial and other aircraft to ensure they do not diverge from their flight plans. Under protocols that are strictly enforced, pilots that depart from their assigned routes are contacted by radio and if their explanations engender suspicions, military combat aircraft could be launched to intercept them.
For this reason, U.S. officials believe it is unlikely that terrorists might try to divert an Air France Paris-to-Los Angeles flight to a city far from its flight path, such as New York. The Air France flights in question cross the Hudson Bay and eastern Canada before dipping down to airspace over Minnesota, and then taking a sharp southwestern swing toward southern California.
Las Vegas
"The only big city near this route is Las Vegas, which they would consider a nice attractive target," one informed government official said.
The Al-Qaida network has long considered Las Vegas to be one of its top targets for a strike because it sees the city as a citadel of western licentiousness, American officials said. In recent days officials said that the intelligence that led to the government's Dec. 21 imposition of the orange or "high risk" terror alert included references to possible Al-Qaida interest in Las Vegas.
In response to these fears, Las Vegas was one of the cities where the Department of Homeland Security in recent days installed a number of outdoor air-handling sensors designed to detect biological pathogens that might be released by terrorists. The other cities where new "Bio-watch" sensors were installed are in California, officials said.
Before this week 31 cities across the nation, including several in California, have had several hundred of the sensors since last March, when the U.S. invasion of Iraq prompted an earlier orange alert.
Government officials said they also partly based their decision to raise the orange alert earlier this week on the statements of an individual knowledgable about Al-Qaida operations who apparently is offering fresh information in interrogations that is deemed credible.