Informant admits to misleading investigators
MSNBC Special Report On Wednesday: Are terror alerts used as political tools?
By David Edwards on 10/11/2005, 9:47am PT  

Guest blogged by David Edwards

Newsday and CNN are reporting that the highly publicized recent subway terror threats in New York were, in fact, a hoax:

The sources said an informant in Iraq who provided the tip had told investigators there was a terrorist plot involving New York's subway system. That informant admitted he gave false information, the sources said.

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Government sources said the three men arrested in Iraq with suspected links to the possible plot had been interviewed and underwent lie detector tests showing they knew nothing about such a plan.

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The additional security measures in New York came Friday only hours after President Bush gave a speech which promoted increased terror fears. Police even shut down parts of the subway due to a suspicious unattended Pepsi bottle.

Across the country, other terror threats alarmed citizens. On Friday, the Washington Monument was evacuated due to a bomb threat. A Rolling Stones concert in Virginia was also temporarily interrupted due to another bomb threat the same day.

MSNBC's Countdown plans to investigate the correlation between politics and terror threats on Wednesday night's show. Last night, Countdown's host, Keith Olbermann noted:

OLBERMANN: And then there is the intersection, or at least the juxtaposition, between politics and terror. We noted it here last week when, after a speech by the president about the war on terror and after the word that the special prosecutor would not guarantee to Karl Rove that he would not indict him, New York City suddenly announced there was credible, specific intelligence about a terror threat to its subway system.

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OLBERMANN: Last Thursday, we spoke of at least 13 coincidences of timing between bad political news for the government and a terror or terror-related event. We will be presenting a special report detailing those and other coincidences on Wednesday night's edition of this news hour, "The Nexus of Politics and Terror" on COUNTDOWN this Wednesday at 8:00 and midnight Eastern here on MSNBC.

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