The security threat level for New York City and Washington was downgraded recently from flourescent lime to hot pink. It's now reported that some of the information used to issue the scare alert is years old.
The BBC was one of many organizations to report on this.
The US administration admits that new warnings of attacks on American cities were based on information gathered by al-Qaeda up to four years ago.
Security was tightened around US financial institutions earlier this week after raids in Pakistan recovered documents reportedly naming them.
Homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said some of the information recovered was collected in 2000/2001.
But she added: "It appears that some of it may have been updated as recently as January of this year."
And she denied that the alert was prompted by political considerations in the run-up to November's presidential poll.
[...]
Her [Townsend's] comments followed reports in leading American newspapers that US officials were unsure if Osama Bin Laden's network was still conducting surveillance on the sites named as potential targets.
I really hope this is all legit. I hope there's some twist, some rational explanation, that I'm just not seeing. One that isn't related to the fact that the Democratic National Convention ended only a few days before the scare alert.
As much as I can't stand the president, I really want to believe this. It's a very dangerous situation when the commander in chief is seen as the boy who cried wolf. What happens if there's a real threat and no one believes him because he's wasted his credibility?
I want to believe the president wouldn't do such a thing. But with him, there's not much benefit of the doubt left to spare.
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