Morrissey
May 23, 04, 1:24 am
Very interesting article about security procedures in Las Vegas...and how they relate to the war on terrorism.
For decades, no city has attracted more dubious characters into its buildings than Las Vegas. The lure of quick scores has made Sin City the most vigilant and diligent user of advanced surveillance, identification, background-checking and security technologies. If domestic security were prosecuted as aggressively as casino security, the terrorists that took down the World Trade Center towers might well have been caught. After all, several of them were in Las Vegas as late as August 2001. Here's what Tom Ridge and counterparts still could learn.
It's Aug. 13, 2001. A man of apparent Egyptian descent calling himself Mohamed Atta checks into an Econo Lodge Motel on Las Vegas Boulevard South. That night, as the temperature cools from 105 degrees, Atta falls asleep in the U.S. city that personifies gambling, drinking, prostitution and even culinary decadence. Could any locale other than Sin City be a greater affront to a Muslim fundamentalist?
This was Atta's second documented visit to Las Vegas, Nev., in three weeks. In fact, between May and August 2001, Atta and four other terrorists that the world would later come to know as attackers of the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon spent time in Las Vegas.
To this day, whether Atta and his associates were at the time crafting their plan to use airplanes as gasoline-laden bombs is anyone's guess. Yet there is a tragic overhang of investigative irony. Atta, Marwan al-Shahhi, Nawaf Alhazmi, Ziad Jarrah and Hani Hanjour placed themselves in the middle of a city that already had become the perfect laboratory for developing and testing the technologies and strategies that may ultimately determine the outcome of what has come to be called the War on Terrorism.
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1397,1562295,00.asp
For decades, no city has attracted more dubious characters into its buildings than Las Vegas. The lure of quick scores has made Sin City the most vigilant and diligent user of advanced surveillance, identification, background-checking and security technologies. If domestic security were prosecuted as aggressively as casino security, the terrorists that took down the World Trade Center towers might well have been caught. After all, several of them were in Las Vegas as late as August 2001. Here's what Tom Ridge and counterparts still could learn.
It's Aug. 13, 2001. A man of apparent Egyptian descent calling himself Mohamed Atta checks into an Econo Lodge Motel on Las Vegas Boulevard South. That night, as the temperature cools from 105 degrees, Atta falls asleep in the U.S. city that personifies gambling, drinking, prostitution and even culinary decadence. Could any locale other than Sin City be a greater affront to a Muslim fundamentalist?
This was Atta's second documented visit to Las Vegas, Nev., in three weeks. In fact, between May and August 2001, Atta and four other terrorists that the world would later come to know as attackers of the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon spent time in Las Vegas.
To this day, whether Atta and his associates were at the time crafting their plan to use airplanes as gasoline-laden bombs is anyone's guess. Yet there is a tragic overhang of investigative irony. Atta, Marwan al-Shahhi, Nawaf Alhazmi, Ziad Jarrah and Hani Hanjour placed themselves in the middle of a city that already had become the perfect laboratory for developing and testing the technologies and strategies that may ultimately determine the outcome of what has come to be called the War on Terrorism.
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1397,1562295,00.asp