(CBS) The FBI publicly warned more than 1,200 banks in the Northeast on Friday of possible terrorist attacks, and government officials said the unconfirmed information came in part from a high-ranking al Qaeda leader in U.S. custody.
Authorities cautioned that they had no information about a specific plot or threats to any financial institution, but a U.S. law enforcement source said authorities feared a suicide attack. Another senior official said the threat was not specified.
The warning of what the FBI described as possible "physical attacks" was based in part on information from by Abu Zubaydah, the highest-ranking al Qaeda terrorist leader in U.S. custody, two officials said, but it was unclear if he was telling the truth.
Abu Zubaydah was one of Osama bin Laden's top planners of terrorist operations, having knowledge of al Qaeda plots and operational cells. He was captured by Pakistani and U.S. authorities in Pakistan a few weeks ago and is recovering from gunshot wounds he received in the raid.
Bin Laden has long been fascinated by the U.S. financial world and bragged in a recently released video that the Sept. 11 attack caused more than $1 trillion in losses on the stock exchange. The actual number was $600 billion and Wall Street has since recovered much of that.
The real headline of the day is not so much the threat against banks, because they've always been a target, but that Zubaydah is talking, reports
CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.
"It's important to note that there is no specific threat to any specific institution," Attorney General John Ashcroft said. "We are not changing our national threat level. We are not asking the banks to close, nor urging people to stay away from banks."
Ashcroft asked citizens to report suspicious activity to the FBI.
A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the warning is the result of information the intelligence community received from interviews with captured al Qaeda suspects from Afghanistan.
The information was given to the FBI which, along with the Homeland Security Office at the White House, decided to remind financial institutions of the need to be vigilant.
Ashcroft acknowledged that the information "may or may not be reliable."
The attorney general defended issuing the warning even without a specific threat.
"Our policy is to share information with appropriate authorities and the American public when we have threat information that merits their attention," Ashcroft said. "We believe that this information sharing disrupts and prevents terrorist activity."
The FBI warning went to banks and law enforcement in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia.
Read the FBI statement on possible terror threats against banks.
"The United States government has received unsubstantiated information that unspecified terrorists are considering physical attacks against U.S. financial institutions in the northeast, particularly banks, as part of their campaign against U.S. financial interests," the FBI said in a statement.
The FBI said the decision to issue the warning came after discussions among the Justice Department, Office of Homeland Security and the Treasury Department.
The FBI said the nation's threat status remains at "yellow," using the new system of color codes assigned by the Justice Department and Office of Homeland Security. The threat status for the Northeast similarly was unchanged at yellow, the FBI said.
In March the government adopted a new color-coded rating for the severity of threats. A yellow alert is defined as an "elevated" or "significant" risk of attack. The highest alert is red.
A U.S. official said it was significant that both the region and the banking community itself remain on "yellow alert," meaning the threats did not meet the criteria for a higher alert. To require an orange alert, the threats would have had to include a specific time and date and have corroborated and credible, the official said.
Friday's alert came as the world's finance ministers gathered in Washington for the semi-annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank.
The FBI announcement came a few hours after the Treasury Department blocked financial assets belonging to a Pakistan-based group and nine people believed to have provided financial support to al Qaeda, the terror network operated by Osama bin Laden.
The warning also came on the seventh anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.
It follows a bomb threat earlier in the week against an unspecified national bank in downtown Washington. Many bank branches shut down but there was no explosion. Police later said the threat was a prank by a 13-year-old Dutch boy.
The Treasury Department, which worked with the FBI on the warning against banks, is monitoring the situation closely. But banking regulators did not order banks to close.
