About that subway attack alert: Here's what everyone's forgetting...

New York, New York. It's a helluva town. The people ride in a hole in the ground.

But are they safe?

Perhaps not, according to this ABC report, which speaks -- at first -- of a bomb threat involving 19 (ah, that magic number!) terrorists. But dig a little deeper into the piece, and you'll find this puzzler:

According to sources in intelligence, emergency services and police headquarters, the intelligence community developed information that the threat may have involved pharmacists from Iraq coming to New York for some kind of chemical attack targeting the subways.

Three insurgents, one or more of whom are pharmacists, were arrested during a raid by a U.S. military and intelligence community team, sources said, and one of those caught disclosed the threat.

Ah. So apparently we are no longer dealing with mad bombers. The enemies are pharmacists bearing chemicals. In other words, a CBW attack.

One must ask, first and foremost, how a group of anti-American Iraqi pharmacist would enter this country. You'd think that even the Bush administration could keep tabs on all Iraq-to-U.S. travel.

But the matter goes deeper. The current alert seems to have erased all memory of a news story that appeared a mere two months ago. I discussed it in this August 6 post titled "Gassing New York." Forgive a bit of self-quotation:

Newsday reports that the Department of Homeland Security will gas New York's streets and subways. The intent is to use harmless substances to trace the potential damage of an airborne chemical attack. The test gases will include PFT, or perfluorocarbon tracer gas, and sulfur hexafluoride. I have no reason to doubt that these substances are benign.

Do you really believe that this experimental attack has nothing to do with the current alarm?

As I noted earlier, the Homeland Security "test" never made much sense. The CIA and the Defense Department conducted exactly similar tests decades ago. Why replicate the experiment when the old data should still serve?

This is not the first time in recent history when a security "test" seemed to morph into the Real Thing. Remember the great anti-war rally in Washington, DC? The march -- which was plagued by a series of non-coincidental transit interruptions -- took place (as noted in a previous post) against the backdrop of a DOD exercise called GRANITE SHADOW. (There's some controversy as to whether that's the actual name; for now, let us use this cryptonym.)

Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.

Ain't coincidence grand? Just as the military was prepping itself for a WMD attack on the mall (obviously, a germ weapon would be a type of WMD), the peace marchers gathered on the mall were exposed to tularemia.

Biohazard sensors showed the presence of small amounts of potentially dangerous tularemia bacteria in the Mall area last weekend as huge crowds assembled there, but health officials said they believed the levels were too low to be a threat.

Health authorities in the Washington area were notified yesterday that the bacteria were found in and near the area between the U.S. Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, where crowds gathered Saturday for an antiwar rally and a book festival.

How did tularemia get there? It's exceptionally rare in nature. But tularemia has been extensively studied by the bio-war specialists at Fort Detrick and elsewhere. (See this superb piece by Bob Fitakis. You should also read what Xymphora's been saying lately.)

If I were the paranoid type, I'd say that an operation such as GRANITE SHADOW might provide cover for anyone planting the bacteria -- which would explain why a secret operation received public mention.

Similarly, if I were the paranoid type, I'd say that a Homeland Security CBW "test" in New York City subways could provide cover for anyone who wanted to plant a nasty microbe or some gas cannisters. Or even a few bombs. If subway riders do get sick -- or worse -- the 19 "terrorists" will receive all blame.

And Bush's poll numbers will skyrocket.