FBI Warns Police of Possible Terror Attack

The FBI has warned police agencies in the Western United States to be especially vigilant about the possibility that Al Qaeda terrorists may be planning attacks in California or New Mexico, law enforcement officials said Thursday.

Without offering specifics, the FBI advisory was sent to more than a dozen Joint Terrorism Task Force teams days ago in the hope that law enforcement officials would redouble their efforts to monitor suspicious activities and follow investigative leads on extremists, officials said.

At the same time, FBI officials and others in several cities emphasized that the latest warning contained no specific or corroborated information about a threat to Los Angeles or any other jurisdiction.

“We don’t have a time or a date or anything specific related to the threat,” said Bill Elwell, the FBI spokesman in Albuquerque. “We are just letting people know that we have this information and asking them to remain vigilant.”

Although California has routinely been mentioned in previous FBI bulletins, it was unclear why New Mexico also was cited in the latest advisory, though it is home to Kirtland Air Force Base and Sandia National Laboratories, a nuclear weapons research facility.

In the new warning from FBI headquarters, officials said recent intelligence reports indicate “that possible Al Qaeda elements exist” in Los Angeles, California and New Mexico “and are planning terrorist attacks.”

The warning states, again without details, that a planned attack in the U.S. in May “was postponed due to increased security.”

One top U.S. counterterrorism official said that although they were mentioned in the same recent advisory, there was no connection between the purported plot in May and the latest potential threat. “We don’t tie those two together,” the official said.

“The credibility of the information we are getting in this case cannot be established,” the official said. “But in these times, when we have anything that has specifics, whether credible or not, we have to get that out to the local authorities.

Los Angeles Police Cmdr. Mark Leap said the department takes all threats seriously, but noted that there were key differences between the latest terror warning and others allegedly targeting Los Angeles International Airport or, two months ago, a Westside shopping mall.

“The mall threat was specific as to the date, the type of attack and an approximate location,” Leap said. “So we had quite a bit of information to respond to on that one.”

Despite a lack of specific information, he said, anti-terrorism agents were working to develop possible leads.

“We are concerned about the information, and we are working with our federal partners in the intelligence community to develop more information and actionable intelligence,” Leap said.

He noted that there has been a steady stream of threat intelligence for years concerning Los Angeles. “We know, based on debriefings of detainees, that Los Angeles has been targeted by Al Qaeda in the past,” Leap said.