US declared possible terrorist attackers

&to=http:// english.pravda.ru/columnists/2002/07/18/32798.html ' target=_blank>U.S. Homeland Security officials have prepared a report listing 12 ways &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/2002/05/14/28660.html ' target=_blank>terrorists might attack the country and estimates of the death toll each attack might produce. Existence of the unreleased document was first reported by the New York Times newspaper late Tuesday. The Times says the scenarios include terrorists blowing up a chlorine tank, killing more than 17,000 people, and spreading pneumonic plague in public areas, killing 2500. In another scenario, terrorists would infect cattle with &to=http:// english.pravda.ru/main/2001/03/14/2965.html ' target=_blank>foot-and-mouth disease at several sites, resulting in financial losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, informs VOA News. According to ABC News, the agency charged with protecting homeland security developed an elaborate, confidential report to alert states to a host of terror-strike scenarios, but the document was inadvertently posted on several states' public Web sites before being removed. The department has been working for a year on a National Planning Scenarios plan that outlines a number of plausible attacks including by nerve gas, anthrax, pneumonic plague and truck bomb. The report, still confidential, was requested by a presidential directive in December 2003 and will be made public in upcoming months, Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Tuesday. It was inadvertently posted on Internet sites of several states, including Hawaii, before it was taken down, Roehrkasse said. The other states were not immediately identified. Homeland Security "has developed a number of scenarios that will aid federal, state and local homeland security officials in developing plans to become more prepared to prevent and respond to an act of terrorism, should it occur," Roehrkasse said. NR

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