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White House chastises FBI about hospital threat
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The White House admonished the FBI on Thursday for releasing what it considers unreliable information about a possible terrorist threat to hospitals in four U.S. cities. Several officials said the White House had made clear its displeasure to the FBI. The officials declined to say how the White House displeasure was made known to the FBI, although two officials said it did not rise to the level of any communication with FBI Director Robert Mueller. As one source put it, the White House feels the bureau alarmed people needlessly "because they did not handle this correctly." This official called the information about a potential threat to hospitals of "very low credibility." An Office of Homeland Security official also said the intelligence that led to the warning was of "low credibility" and that is why the information wasn't released. Another source characterized the intelligence as significantly less reliable than information shared with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the past. He said there is no plan to raise the country's threat level because there are no current threats that are sufficiently specific and credible. The FBI alerted medical centers in Chicago, Illinois; Houston, Texas; San Francisco, California, and Washington, D.C., that it had received uncorroborated information that hospitals could be targets of terrorist strikes around the holiday season. The White House officials said it is now routine, as a precaution, to share such information with federal and other law enforcement agencies so that they can adjust protective measures. But the White House said that, in its view, there was no reason to make the information public through an official notice to the medical centers. A statement issued to all San Francisco-area medical providers on November 12 detailed the threat: "On or about December 15, explode bombs/restart anthrax crisis/will do harm in one of the hospitals in Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington." Houston was also on the list, according to Bob Dogium of the FBI office in Houston.
Dogium called it a "general, blanket threat" that was neither corroborated nor specific. Nevertheless, Dogium said the FBI was releasing news of the threat to urge people to be alert and diligent. According to a statement from the FBI office in Chicago, the timing of the possible attacks "is mid-December and the holiday period." The attacks would be in reaction to "the continued arrest of a Pakistani national by Pakistani authorities," according to the statement. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told CNN that hospital administrators should beef up security in and around their facilities and "be aware of terrorists looking for soft targets." "A hospital would be a very soft target," Shelby said. "We would hope no one would ever try to blow up a hospital with patients and people in it, but terrorists would." "As we ratchet up toward Iraq, we have to believe that there will be attempts in this country ... to do us harm," he said. Jim Eaton, chairman of the emergency management committee of California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, said his hospital was prepared for such emergencies. "We take any threat like that seriously in a hospital environment," he told CNN.
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