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Security intensifying as 9/11 anniversary nears

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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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Associated Press writer Tom Hays contributed to this report from

New York.

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