The Bush administration was forced to defend its heightened terrorism alert in three US cities yesterday after it was disclosed that much of the recently discovered al-Qaeda surveillance on financial buildings that prompted the alert was three to four years old. Conor O'Clery, North America Editor, reports from New York
The Homeland Security Secretary, Mr Tom Ridge, denied that the administration's action was politically motivated, saying: "We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security. Our job is to identify the threat."
Mr Ridge travelled to New York yesterday and warned senior executives from financial institutions gathered in the Citicorp building in midtown, one of five specific targets named, to assume the worst.
The scale of the response in the US - with heavily armed police deployed on the streets of New York, Newark and Washington - has nevertheless prompted concern in the US and worldwide about the economic consequences.
Partly as result of the heightened tensions, oil prices rose to a record high of more than $44 a barrel in New York yesterday, and the markets fell on Wall Street.
The US terror alert was raised to high "orange" in the three cities after the arrests of two alleged al-Qaeda operatives, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, in Pakistan turned up computer files showing surveillance of specific financial buildings in the US.
British police said last night that they had arrested 13 men in a series of anti-terror raids across the country. "The men have been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism," a police statement said.
A police spokesman declined to say if there was any link between intelligence from Pakistan and the raids.
The men, all in their 20s and 30s, were arrested in northwest London and in Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Lancashire.
The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, yesterday came under pressure to spell out the level of the terrorism threat in Britain after reports that the captured computer files mentioned potential targets in Britain. The British Home Office said no specific threat had been uncovered but "we are maintaining a state of heightened readiness".
Yesterday, Pakistan's Interior Minister, Mr Faisal Saleh Hayat, said a suspected al-Qaeda member for whom the US had promised a multimillion-dollar reward was arrested in the past few days, as well as two other al-Qaeda suspects of African origin.
Mr Ridge faced growing scepticism in the media and among Democrats about the timing of the terror threat yesterday after the disclosure that the surveillance was conducted in 2000 and 2001.
The White House homeland security adviser, Mr Fran Townsend, acknowledged on NBC television that this was the case but said: "The details were updated - some were updated - as recently as January of this year."
The New York Police Commissioner, Mr Raymond Kelly, said yesterday that the information collected by al-Qaeda was a "vulnerability analysis" and there was no evidence that it was tied to an operational plan.
Mr Ridge said the casing of buildings was updated as late as January of this year, and that al-Qaeda liked to do its homework well in advance, adding that the attack on the World Trade Centre had been three years in preparation. The New York Times said the administration had misled the public on security before, and that the new information "does nothing to bolster the confidence Americans need that the administration is not using intelligence for political gain".
The White House spokesman, Mr Scott McClellan, said yesterday that it was "wrong and plain irresponsible" to suggest the alert was based on old information. "Al-Qaeda has a history of planning attacks well in advance and then updating those plans just before attacking," he said.