***** Los Angeles Times May 23, 2002 Thursday Home Edition SECTION: Part A Main News; Part 1; Page 10; National Desk HEADLINE: The Nation; Terror Warnings Offer Cautionary Tale; Security: Four top officials have said attacks are inevitable. The resulting storm shows how little consensus there is on disclosure. BYLINE: RONALD BROWNSTEIN, TIMES STAFF WRITER DATELINE: WASHINGTON
...Since Sunday, four top officials have declared that various forms of terrorist attacks are inevitable.
...In an interview Wednesday on CNN's "Larry King Live," Vice President Dick Cheney said: "The fact is there is reason to believe that the threat level has increased somewhat.... We haven't changed our practices at all in terms of when we decide to go public and caution people."...
...Also on Sunday, Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," said future attacks were "not a matter of if, but when."
On Monday, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told a conference of district attorneys that he considered it "inevitable" the United States would be targeted by suicide bombers. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a congressional panel he believed terrorists "inevitably" will acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Also since Sunday, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has issued similar warnings about the risk of future attack--even as the FBI transmitted its alerts to local officials on apartment buildings and New York City monuments.... *****
It seems that they all but admitted that prevention is impossible: what's inevitable can't be prevented. Besides....
***** The New York Times May 26, 2002, Sunday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section 6; Page 22; Column 1; Magazine Desk HEADLINE: Nuclear Nightmares BYLINE: By Bill Keller; Bill Keller is a Times columnist and a senior writer for the magazine.
Not If But When: Everybody who spends much time thinking about nuclear terrorism can give you a scenario, something diabolical and, theoretically, doable. ...
...The best reason for thinking it won't happen is that it hasn't happened yet, and that is terrible logic. The problem is not so much that we are not doing enough to prevent a terrorist from turning our atomic knowledge against us (although we are not). The problem is that there may be no such thing as "enough."... ***** -- Yoshie
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