Boosting security as 9/11 anniversary nears

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Security is intensifying at airports, train stations, nuclear plants and major sporting arenas as the nation prepares for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — a date al-Qaida has cited as a potential opportunity to strike again.

Counter terrorism officials say there is no intelligence pointing to a specific plot, but officials fear that someone with terrorist sympathies might see Sept. 11 as the time to make a violent statement.

The security ramp-up around the country underscores a shift in policing focus since the attacks a decade ago. Officers and emergency responders have been trained in detecting suspicious activity that could uncover a terror plot, aware that the threat has changed in part from an organized large-scale attack using airliners as missiles to the potential for smaller, less- sophisticated operations carried out by affiliated groups or individuals.

Much of the equipment being used for surveillance and response has been paid for through federal grants that didn’t exist 10 years ago.

“We’re certainly aware of 9/11 security risks,” said Mark Eisenman, assistant chief over the homeland security command for the police department in Houston, home to the country’s largest port. “Throughout the city, whether it’s the ports or the airports or venues or whatever, you will see an increase in awareness, an increase in resources at strategic places.”

Some of the first information gleaned from Osama bin Laden’s compound after he was killed in May indicated that, as recently as February 2010, al-Qaida considered plans to attack the U.S. on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 airliner strikes. But counter terrorism officials say they believe that planning never got beyond the initial phase, and they have no recent intelligence pointing to an active plot.

On Wednesday, vendors at Los Angeles’ regional transit hub, Union Station, were being briefed by law enforcement on ways to be aware of suspicious activities over the next few weeks, said Commander Pat Jordan, chief of the transit services bureau at the LA County Sheriff’s Department.

There will be increased law- enforcement presence on LA transit systems during the “threat window,” with bomb-sniffing dogs and random baggage searches, he said, adding, “You can’t be complacent.”

Transit employees in LA, like riders around the country, are told that if they see something, they should say something. And three weeks ago, the department had an exercise with an active-shooter scenario similar to the tactics terrorists used in the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai. In the transit environment, Jordan said, some of the greatest threats could come from gunmen and the use of explosives hidden in backpacks.

In Phoenix, police will be doing more patrols around the region’s nuclear-power plant, airports and other critical sites that, if attacked, could affect the city, said Bill Wickers, sergeant at the homeland- defense bureau of the Phoenix Police Department. Messages on the department’s internal television station include reminders of what constitutes suspicious activity, such as someone drawing a diagram of a piece of important infrastructure or someone wearing a heavy coat while it’s 115 degrees outside.

“The heat’s been turned up,” Wickers said.

New Yorkers will see more police officers on patrol in and around ground zero, where the World Trade Center towers stood, said police- department spokesman Paul Browne. The department also plans an increased show of force in the subways, always considered a potential terror target.