Houston on list of top terror targets
Well, I suppose worrying about this beats worrying about whether or not the Rockets will make the playoffs....
WASHINGTON -- Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has identified Houston as one of seven cities most vulnerable to a terrorist attack, based on criteria that include population density and intelligence squeezed from al-Qaida detainees.
Although the distinction is unsettling, there's an upside: Houston will get a share of $100 million in specially designated federal funding -- on top of the city's cut of $8 billion in homeland security grants coming to states and local communities through 2004.
Ridge was given discretion to decide which high-risk areas should receive more money to train police, firefighters and other so-called first responders.
The recipient cities announced Tuesday -- New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco and Houston -- were selected using a highly unusual and secretive process based on classified FBI and CIA intelligence and the Homeland Security Department's internal reviews.
New York, deemed the city most vulnerable to another attack, will get $25 million, the most money awarded. Houston will get $8.7 million, the least of the seven cities.
No details were released to explain why Houston, a city of nearly 2.1 million people, is getting $8.7 million, while Seattle, a city of 590,000, is set to receive $11.3 million. But a possible explanation is that Seattle had been threatened before. During preparations for the millennium celebration, an Algerian man was caught at the Canadian border near the city with enough explosives to blow up a building.
"We took a look at it from a critical infrastructure point of view," Ridge said of how the money was divided. "What are the private-sector assets in these communities that could potentially be targets that we want to protect? What are the federal assets, not just in terms of federal buildings, but are there national icons and things of that sort?"
Ridge said the overriding criterion was the threat of a catastrophic terrorist event, "and obviously, those would occur if a weapon of mass destruction were used in a populated, dense, urban community."
Hey; who's he calling dense?? I resemble that remark....
