Where are you? You have been noticeably absent these last few days.

She's fine. She did post on a thread re security in Paris.

I'm still here. It's been a difficult few days, trying to locate friends at the Pentagon and in NY, among other things (they're OK). I've been spending more time reading and watching the news than usual and researching and writing newsclips from foreign sources for a website I write for. <BR>Speaking of which, here are two items that might be of interest to Fodorites: <BR> <BR>1) German news today announced that a prisoner in Berlin made a special plea recently to contact the CIA because he had information about an imminent terrorist attack on the USA. German officials allowed him to make the phone call. The CIA refused to speak to him. <BR> <BR>2) In August, the FBI apprehended a Franco-Algerian man in Boston because he was carrying multiple passports and had Boeing flight manuals and other documents in his possession. The FBI contacted French security officials who told the FBI that the man was definitely an associate of Bin Laden's, that he had been part of the Afghan mujahadins' uprising against the USSR, and that he had been part of a terrorist cell in Algeria. The French official was quoted as saying that this man's "terrorist pedigree is as long as your arm." The FBI released the man and never followed up with the French security official. <BR> <BR>I drove by the Pentagon on Wednesday and it's pretty horrific, though it must pale in comparison to NY. I'm past shock and horror now and into quiet inarticulation. <BR> <BR>

StCirq, <BR> <BR>Thank you for the news update. The website you write for is lucky to have you: it is always refreshing to read postings by you and others who have a good command of language. <BR> <BR>As for you "Some of us", have you nothing better to do than reply to a posting merely to insult someone? Haven't we endured enough hatred and animosity toward peoples this week?

Hi Art! Glad to see you can find email anywhere you are I just posted a url on your Poland thread to a picture of the US embassy in Warsaw. <BR> <BR>St. Cirq's words express, better than I could, what my process has been "I'm past shock and horror now and into quiet inarticulation." I also feel anger at the lives lost. I don't care about buildings or money -- it's those lives that get to me.

StCirq: This is very disturbing. Is there a website where we can read more on these items?

Holly: <BR> <BR>The bit about the Franco-Algerian man I read in the newspaper called Le Parisien. You can locate it on their website (in French), which is www.leparisien.com. <BR> <BR>The German story I saw on our foreign news channel. PB Provence sent me an e-mail about it and I watched the German news that night and there it was. <BR> <BR>Both pretty disturbing stories, and I'm sure we'll be hearing more like them.

Sometimes bad guys are "let go" on purpose, for instance...to see if they will lead them to someone else.

Welcome back, StCirq. We've missed you.

Thanks, Linda, <BR>I've really been too busy to be on Fodor's. Life as we knew it in Washington,DC, has changed, and we are all going to have to face it. I'll try to respond to Fodor's requests, but really there are many more important things going on here in our Nation's capitol that I have to deal with. Not that I hold some high position or anything, but I do what I can do through my consultant capability to various agencies and the World Bank.

Forget it - the last of my message just got cut off, but ignore it. There's too much carnage and too many people needing real help to focus on my e-mail,so just expunge it.