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WASHINGTON (AP) — Security is intensifying at airports, train
stations, nuclear plants and major sporting arenas as the nation
prepares for the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks – a date
al-Qaida has cited as a potential opportunity to strike
again.
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Counterterrorism 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.
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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.
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Much of the equipment being used for surveillance and response has
been paid for through federal grants that didn’t exist 10 years
ago.
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“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.”
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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 counterterrorism
officials say they believe that planning never got beyond the
initial phase and they have no recent intelligence pointing to an
active plot.
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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 L.A. County
Sheriff’s Department.
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There will be increased law enforcement presence on L.A. transit
systems during the “threat window,” with bomb sniffing dogs, and
random baggage searches, he said, adding, “You can’t be
complacent.”
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Transit employees in L.A., like riders around the country, are told
that if they see something, they should say something. And three
weeks ago, the department held 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.
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.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 making
drawing a diagram of a piece of important infrastructure or someone
wearing a heavy coat while it’s 115 degrees outside.
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“The heat’s been turned up,” Wickers said.
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And there’s a rapid response team of hazardous material
technicians, special weapons and tactics and bomb operators ready
to go, Wickers said, adding that the city used federal money that
became available after 9/11 to help fund that team and other
counterterrorism measures.
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The police chief in Arlington, Va., home to the Pentagon, which was
attacked on 9/11, called the weeks surrounding the anniversary a
time of heightened awareness.
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“Ten years ago changed the world for us, and we should all be
consciously aware of what’s going on around us,” said Douglas
Scott.
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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.
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Plans to tamper with an unspecified U.S. rail track so that a train
would fall off in a valley or from bridge were found on handwritten
notes pulled from bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout in May. The
al-Qaida planners noted that if they attacked a train by tilting
it, the plan would succeed only once because the tilting would be
spotted the next time. U.S. counterterrorism officials believe
these ideas never got off the drawing board.
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“It’s been a long buildup as we approach the anniversary of 9/11,”
said Sean Duggan, assistant chief at the Scottsdale, Ariz., Police
Department. Duggan said his department gets daily updates from the
FBI and Homeland Security Department. But over the past two months,
the focus has been on the 10th anniversary of the terror
hijackings, as events are planned around the country to commemorate
the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 2001 attacks.
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“While there is currently no specific or credible threat,
appropriate and prudent security measures are ready to detect and
prevent plots against the United States should they emerge,”
Homeland Security Department spokesman Matt Chandler
said.
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President Barack Obama said this month that the threat of a plot by
a lone terrorist is particularly troublesome.
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“The risk that we’re especially concerned over right now is the
lone-wolf terrorist, somebody with a single weapon being able to
carry out wide-scale massacres of the sort that we saw in Norway
recently,” Obama said.
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In July, 69 people at a youth camp in Norway were shot to death.
Authorities said a man carried out the attack with the purpose of
saving Norway and the rest of Europe from Muslims and
multiculturalism.
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“You know, when you’ve got one person who is deranged or driven by
a hateful ideology, they can do a lot of damage, and it’s a lot
harder to trace those lone-wolf operators,” Obama said.
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The White House said the president’s homeland security and
counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, has had senior-level
meetings over the past four months about threats to the U.S. and
appropriate actions leading up to the anniversary.
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—
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Associated Press writer Tom Hays contributed to this report from
New York.
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