Newsgroup: it.economia.borsa
Titolo: (OT) sembra la trama di un film: Una nave fantasma ...

      Martedì 18 Giugno 2002, 17:00
      Una nave fantasma carica di terroristi in rotta verso L.A
      LOS ANGELES - Che Al-Qaeda possa nuovamente sferrare un attacco
terroristico contro obiettivi statunitensi è cosa praticamente certa. Nelle
scorse settimane il ministro della Difesa Rumsfeld e lo stesso presidente
Bush, avevano messo in guardia gli americani.
      Confini pattugliati dalla Guardia Nazionale, misure di sicurezza
intensificate negli aeroporti e nei porti potrebbero però non bastare ad
evitare il peggio.
      L'Fbi è infatti alla ricerca di una nave che si starebbe dirigendo
verso le coste californiane con un carico esplosivo: 40 membri di al-Qaeda.
Secondo quanto riportato dal Washington Times, le forze dell'intelligence
americana hanno ricevuto segnalazioni in questo senso nelle scorse
settimane, ma ad oggi, non sono stati trovati riscontri effettivi.
      Dalla fine di maggio, le indagini si sono intensificate ma dei 40
terroristi non è stata trovata alcuna traccia. La nave - che batte bandiera
di uno stato mediorientale - sarebbe partita dal Mediterraneo agli inizi di
maggio per arrivare vicino all'isola di Santa Catalina a sud di Los Angeles
dopo diverse settimane di navigazione.
      Non è stata abbassata la guardia, spiega un portavoce dell'Fbi, ma non
sono state trovare prove certe dell'arrivo - e dell'esistenza - del
vascello.

cui si aggiunge questo da 
www.debka.com
Stowaway Terrorists Steal into America by Sea Container
From DEBKA-Net-Weekly Intelligence Report
18 June:  Between 75 and 125 operatives of the fundamentalist terror
network, al Qaeda, are known to have illegally penetrated the United States
in the last two months, mostly through American ports as stowaways in
commercial sea containers. Many more are estimated to have slipped through
unbeknownst to US authorities.
This clandestine traffic was first exposed in DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue No. 39,
November 30, 2001. In its latest issue, DEBKA-Net-Weekly, June 14, 2002,
tracks this burgeoning menace, which is making the United States and the
world's shipping industry increasingly susceptible to the threat of terror
attack by invaders from the sea. US port authority sources believe
penetrations occurred at New York, New Jersey, Long Beach, Miami and
Savannah, Georgia, as well as Port Everglades, Florida. Container, oil and
bulk ports are especially vulnerable.
Some of the stowaways arrive complete with arms or explosives, the nature of
which - conventional, radioactive, chemical or biological - the US
authorities are at great pains to keep dark. However, shipping sources told
us witnesses had seen suspect containers appearing to be quarantined after
their al Qaeda infiltrators were killed, suggesting the suspected presence
of toxic substances.
The threat applies equally to the international container traffic that
carries much of the world's lifeblood. Experts have opined that a "dirty
bomb" exploding in a container at sea would stop the world's container
traffic cold until a credible security system for sea-going containers was
in place.
On May 22, 2002, Fairplay International Shipping Weekly reported:
"More details have emerged about an apparent infiltration of Islamic
extremists through US ports during the past two months. Some of the men
slipped through security disguised as stevedores, according to Bob Graham,
chair of the Senate select committee on intelligence. He said he had seen
reports indicating that some extremists might have been wearing safety
jackets and protective helmets to give the appearance of dockworkers. US
Coast Guard officials have refused to divulge any information about the
reports, but Graham stressed: 'The American people have a right to know.' He
said 25 extremists 'entered in a foreign country, hid out in a container and
then entered the United States'.
In some of the stowaway containers, US counter-terror authorities were
dismayed to find uniforms of American dockworkers and even US Coast Guards,
along with the appropriate tags and ID for free access to port facilities,
including off-limits sections. Groups of 5 to 7 of these men dressed as port
workers have been sighted hurrying over to waiting vans and driving off at
speed.
US Coast Guard, Special Forces and CIA and FBI counter-terror units
routinely conduct massive manhunts to fend off the multi-tentacled al Qaeda
invasion. Some sources report firefights between hunters and terrorists
trapped in sea containers, in which between 15 and 25 terrorists may have
died. In Miami and Savanna, containers with secret human burdens were
unloaded from incoming vessels. Anti-terror squads shifted the boxes to a
quiet corner of the harbor, drilled holes in their sides and filled them
with gas and smoke bombs. The stowaways suffocated to death.
For all their efforts, the US hunters have not apprehended a single live al
Qaeda terrorist landing by sea.
Background checks for seamen and stevedores, heavily armed National and
Coast Guardsmen, special FBI and CIA units patrolling American harbors,
gamma-ray devices for inspecting cargoes, quarantine areas in large ports,
are part of the changing landscape in US docks. On container terror, US and
other intelligence services were again slow to pinpoint the danger despite
indications from October 2001of al Qeda plans to exploit sea containers -
both for secretly transporting terrorists and as an amphibious terrorist
weapon. There were no measures in place to prevent the many armed terror
cells from fanning out among ports, mainly in Europe, in order to stow away
aboard container vessels bound for US harbors.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources learn that Livorno, Italy, is one of those ports.
At least two shipping companies unknowingly targeted for this traffic, one a
major American firm and another a reputable Middle East shipping line.
Investigators have concluded that al Qaeda owes much of its success in
planting its operatives in ship's containers to its links with criminal
elements to be found in most of the world's big container ports.
In the last two months, hundreds of US agents of all branches of security
and intelligence, including Special Forces, have been deployed in ports in
Europe and the Far East, where they are developing new security standards
and monitoring ocean-going containers before embarkation.