6/5/2004: Strange cassettes found in downtown Philly

Wednesday morning, a patrolling cop finds a cassette tape, taped with a paper airplane, attached to a pole near city hall. A street cleaner tells him there was another one that he took down nearby.

The tapes were enclosed in plastic sandwich bags and paper airplanes were taped alongside. The officer played one tape in his patrol car and says it contained "a Middle Eastern language." The area was cordoned off. Federal investigators and bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in.

And that's where this story ends so far. Hoax? Confusion? Game? Innocent communique between friends? Or the evidence of a more serious plot? Well, who the hell knows. No further information.

So many of these things turn out to be nothing that it's hard to know whether to pay attention to them. A storage locker full of C4 plastic explosive at the bus station. An empty rocket launcher found at the bottom of the river.

For a long time in 2002-2003 it really felt like the shit was going to hit the fan, but it was the same feeling in some ways as we had in an earlier era, when there was always a chance of a nuclear bomb being dropped. In some ways it still feels like that.

But I'm still going downtown today.

full story

The adventure continues ... in a story which is not confirmed to be related ...

Piles of white powder were found in front of several buildings in Center City yesterday including Police Headquarters and the Philadelphia Mint. The reports indicated that an "Indian looking man" was seen placing the powder at one or more of the locations.

The substance was tested and is supposed to be "mostly corn starch".

Maybe Ridge's boys are testing local response.

I know if I was planning a major terrorist attack the first thing I would do would be to put tapes of my ideas in plastic bags and tape them to nearby poles.

The testing was actually done in Early to Mid May. There were drills for a biological attacks carried out in Montgomery County (at King of Prussia Mall) and in Philadelphia (at the National Constitution Center and at the Linc ... activities at the Linc included a SWAT assault.)

I was in the Emergency Operations Center for Montgomery County during the drill. Interesting to see how the response gets coordinated.

Last year I attended a similar drill at Willow Grove Mall ... the scenario was an explosion of a dirty bomb in the food court, but the first responders didn't have that piece of information and so became victims themselves ...

They are playing these games with some very realistic scenarios.

The article says in part:
"Around 8:15 a.m. a patrol officer spotted an audio cassette taped to a utility pole outside the Masonic Temple "

Always knew those Masons were up to something...

Can anyone enlighten me on what the significance of Philadelphia may or may not be?

Well, if you let off a nuke in philly, it'd hit areas that actually do matter.
*ducks and rolls*

And hoagies. Don't forget hoagies.

You really CAN'T get those anywhere else.

Hey look at the guy just to the rignt of the pole, I think he's talking into his cuff, must be with the Secret Service. Check out the sunglasses and the lapel pin.

Uh you don't think it was Travis Bickle who put it there?

I'm sure they know what the tape says by now. Wonder If we'll ever know?

uh, you guys forgot the famous philly blunt. if all of those burned in a single day... oh wait, you would probably be laughing your ass off in a sort of relaxed way, while watching news reports about a run on all of the vending machines in the city.

It's a mercy terrorist attack. They don't want Philadelphia to have to suffer the shame of another sports defeat when victory is assured.

Thanks for the morning laugh guys!

Worry *might* be reasonable. At least translate the tapes!

Why would Philly be targeted? The only reason you would target something right between two large, important cities would be...if you were going to set off a big nuke.

Why would someone tape tapes to a phone pole? Either as a prank, or to try to cause fear, or because the person knew about a terrorist plot and didn't want to come to police because they thought they would be arrested and interrogated, worried about being traced through a phone tip, just generally paranoid, and had to be anonymous to not be killed by the others in on the conspiracy.

Hey, we may be insignificant for a lotta reasons, but this IS the cradle of liberty here!!

Frankly I think the next attacks will more likely be in the "heartland" ... midwest, maybe Chicago, if they go for a city, or some small town where stuff like that isn't supposed to happen.

The point of terrorism, as far as I understand it, after all, is to cause terror ... and what would be more terrifying than making it clear that small town America is not a safe place? We're fairly resilliant as far as attacks on major cities are concerned.