America strikes notebook

Compiled from Times wires

© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 1, 2001

Ashcroft: 3 men knew of attacks

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft disclosed Wednesday that the government had caught suspects who were believed to have had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 hijackings.

He said that three Arab men who lived in Michigan had been found in possession of airport diagrams, false immigration forms, a fraudulent American visa and a false alien identification card, and that they were "suspected of having knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks."

Other law enforcement officials previously identified the three as suspects in the attacks, but said there had been no evidence to tie them directly to the hijacking plans. They said that in his comments Wednesday, Ashcroft was apparently referring to a diagram for an airport in Amman, Jordan.

U.S. student visas called no shield

WASHINGTON -- The nation's system of student visas wasn't designed to stop or track foreign terrorists, and it doesn't, State Department and immigration officials testified Wednesday.

As it turned out, only one of the 19 hijackers who crashed U.S. airliners on Sept. 11 entered the country on a student visa, the federal officials said at a joint hearing of two subcommittees of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

But the system for issuing and enforcing student visas had nothing to do with that, since it relies on the same flawed threat-screening system as all other U.S. visas, the officials said.

Most of gold removed from World Trade Center

NEW YORK -- Most of the $200-million of gold and silver buried under a building destroyed in the World Trade Center attack has been recovered.

"I think we have most of it. I'm not sure we have all of it yet," Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Wednesday.

The metals in a Bank of Nova Scotia vault at 4 World Trade Center must be moved "because authorities need to demolish the building," said Pam Agnew, a spokeswoman for the bank.

Armored cars were seen Wednesday heading to and from the site, and Giuliani confirmed that they were carrying the treasure. Agnew declined to disclose any details of the removal.

Sales of antidepressants, sedatives up after attacks

After the attacks of Sept. 11, many Americans have turned to prescription drugs, according to new data from IMS Health, the nation's leading supplier of pharmaceutical information.

In the first full week after the attacks, the number of prescriptions for sedatives, like Ambien and Halcion, was up 4 percent nationally over the IMS benchmark, an average of the prescription volume from eight weeks this summer. By the first week in October, sedative prescriptions were up 11 percent. Prescriptions for antidepressants also peaked in early October, up 5 percent.

Prettier security barriers proposed for capital

WASHINGTON -- The nation's capital should protect its monuments with barriers that blend into the urban landscape and turn Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House into a pedestrian promenade of historic beauty, a federal task force recommended.

The report recommended that the street remain closed to normal vehicle traffic in front of the White House for now. In the meantime, it said, experts should consider constructing an underground traffic tunnel to ease congestion caused by the street's partial closure to traffic six years ago.

A new, secure transit system could carry people by the presidential mansion and to federal monuments, the report said.

The report estimated it would cost about $100-million to implement the initial recommendations.

FBI says Web site for tips needs $18-million

WASHINGTON -- A Web site used by the FBI to gather information on the terrorist attacks needs nearly $18-million to step up operations, two senators said Wednesday.

The Internet Fraud Complaints Center, a partnership of the FBI and the nonprofit National White Collar Crime Center, was created in 1999 to help alert authorities to Internet fraud.

After Sept. 11, the Justice Department encouraged people to use the site to provide tips on the terrorist attacks. It has received about 140,000 tips since then.

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