Friday, December 26, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

TERROR THREAT: Officials: LV not a target

Sheriff says plot report false; Guinn aide says air sensors not linked to orange alert

A Washington Post report that put Las Vegas in the cross hairs of terrorists who might have planned to hijack recently canceled Air France flights was flatly contradicted by state and local homeland security leaders Thursday.

"It's absolutely false," Clark County Sheriff Bill Young said Thursday. Young said he spoke with FBI sources Wednesday. "We were not being targeted. I was told they were targeting Los Angeles."

Jerry Bussell, Gov. Kenny Guinn's adviser on homeland security, concurred.

"I can substantiate that," Bussell said of Young's comment. "The Washington Post is getting information that I can't substantiate."

Federal Homeland Security workers nonetheless are installing outdoor air sensors around Las Vegas that can detect biological pathogens. Bussell said Thursday that he requested the sensors months ago, and that the Post incorrectly reported that their installation is a response to the current orange-alert status in effect across the nation.

In today's edition of the Post, unnamed U.S. officials speculated that terrorists might have intended to hijack an Air France flight from Paris to Los Angeles and crash it in Las Vegas.

The Air France flights in question cross the Hudson Bay and eastern Canada before entering airspace over Minnesota, then take a sharp turn southwest toward Southern California.

"The only big city near this route is Las Vegas, which they would consider a nice attractive target," a government official told the Post.

The officials told the Post that the al-Qaida network has long considered Las Vegas one of its top targets for a terrorist strike because it sees the city as a bastion of Western lewdness and excess.

However, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday that Los Angeles was the intended target of the Air France flight.

"There was little doubt in anybody's mind that L.A. was the target of this one," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official told the Times. "We believed they were going to take the aircraft over and that they were going to fly it into something in L.A."

Several national media outlets, including the Post, the Times and MSNBC, have reported in recent days that the intelligence that led to the government's Dec. 21 imposition of the high terror alert across the nation included references to Las Vegas as a possible target.

If that were the case, Bussell said Thursday, Nevada officials would have been alerted immediately. Bussell said Guinn spoke with federal Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge on Wednesday afternoon and received assurances that he would be informed without delay of any threats against the state.

"Ridge told the governor he would call immediately if there was anything for him to be concerned about," Bussell said. "We're telling everyone that if the safety of citizens is concerned, we're going to tell you."

Other local and state officials have said they have no knowledge of imminent threats against Las Vegas. Ridge specifically told Guinn on Wednesday that Las Vegas was not a target, Guinn spokesman Greg Bortolin said Thursday.

Homeland security in Las Vegas will be bolstered by outdoor sensors, Bussell said. Bussell said he began lobbying for them when other cities received them and Las Vegas did not.

"These are monitoring devices, not warning devices," said Bussell, who did not have information on how many sensors were being installed in Las Vegas or where they would be placed. "It's a precautionary measure."

Bussell said he was informed Wednesday that Las Vegas would receive the equipment.

Thirty-one cities across the nation, including several in California, have had several hundred sensors placed since March, when the U.S. invasion of Iraq prompted an earlier orange alert, the Post reported.