Word: alertness
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...outbreaks of disease, a sign of a possible biological attack. Within seven hours, 50 tons of medical supplies had arrived in the city. Meanwhile, four other teams of medics had rushed to Washington, and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson had put 7,000 more medical professionals on alert nationwide. The chronology of events, recorded in internal government documents, was obtained by TIME but not confirmed by HHS until last week. According to Thompson, Sept. 11 marked the first time the CDC's Health Alert System had been exercised so completely and at such an extraordinary level. "Granted," said...
Since Sept. 11, the President and other U.S. leaders have urged Americans not to act as though the sky is falling. They have said we should be alert, but they have also told us to get out and see a movie, order a steak, maybe fly to see Aunt Lisa in Palm Springs. Behind the mixed message is a question: How can we strike a balance between watching for future attacks and getting on with normal life...
...Ashcroft and his aides would not reveal precisely what information prompted their extraordinary alert. But senior officials say the raw data underlying the warning came from an overseas source developed by the CIA and buttressed by snippets of information gleaned through other intelligence efforts around the world. Without offering any specifics, the source - whose reliability is still uncertain - warned that al-Qaeda will strike at any moment. As an official puts it, the information may or may not be credible, "but nobody's going to take a chance...
...Federal law-enforcement officials tell Time that the FBI is expected to issue another alert this week, pointing to possible terrorist activity on Thursday, Oct. 18. That's the day four al-Qaeda associates convicted of bombing the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 are due to be sentenced. While neither the FBI nor the intelligence agencies have specific information that the bin Laden organization plans to attack then, analysts believe terrorists may find the moment irresistible. But U.S. officials also recognize that a strike may not come that day, just as nothing happened...
...being wary - or even fearful. Some local law-enforcement officials think the FBI's public warning last Thursday, coming after repeated alarms on the nonpublic National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, was overblown. "Without a developed threat, the alert is difficult to operationalize," says Michael Jordan, public information coordinator of the St. Paul police department in Minnesota. "We can't go to double-heightened alert. We can't have all our officers working 24 hours...