Terrorist Threats Prove Untrue

This Satuday came and went without incident in Boston, despite widespread rumors that the FBI had uncovered a terrorist plot aimed at Boston this weekend.

A rash of e-mail forwards and newspaper articles inspired local, but limited, panic and several students left the area while police presence was beefed up at the Harvard football game on Saturday.

Extra security could be seen everywhere, from sporting events to public transportation, continuing a recent trend of stepped-up local security that started after the hijacking of two planes from Logan Airport.

Extra police were posted around the city, even though the rumored threats were shown to be empty by Friday, according to Boston Police Department media relations officer Cliff M. Connolly.

“There is a high anxiety level out there,” Connolly said. “The investigation proved that they weren’t credible threats at all.”

Connolly said that a large event at City Hall Plaza on Saturday went off without a problem, and that “people understand that we have to get back to our normal schedules.”

Additional police officers were posted at the Harvard-Brown game on Saturday, according to an e-mail from John Veneziano, Harvard’s assistant athletic director for sports media relations. The game was the first game of the season, as last Saturday’s game was cancelled following the events of Sept. 11.

“Aside from the added police presence, no packages or coolers were allowed into the stadium, purses were subject to search, and certain parking locations close to the stadium were kept cleared,” Veneziano said.

A weekend poll conducted by The Crimson showed that 16 percent of students thought that Harvard could be the target of a large-scale terrorist attack.

And many students—not knowing what would happen—took the opportunity to spend the weekend away from campus.

“My roommate and I took the ferry to Provincetown,” Jennifer E. Clark ’02 wrote in an e-mail. “I had been thinking of going this weekend but I had thesis research to do and the threat of a Saturday attack convinced me.”

Clark—who avoided taking the T to the waterfront “because we’d heard the subways were a potential target”—said she was ribbed by her roommates for leaving.

“The rest of my roommates were pretty calm, stayed put, and were teasing me for running away and leaving them here,” Clark said.

Beyond the campus, heavy patrols were maintained by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Association (MBTA), as well as the Boston and Cambridge police departments—although the intensity of local policing has been uniformly rigorous since Sept. 11.

The T has had stepped-up security, according to MBTA press secretary Brian A. Pedro.

Pedro said that security measures have included frequently running trains through the night to “keep an eye on things”—hours when the T’s tracks are usually closed for maintenance work—and running the first train of the day slowly so the conductor can look for mysterious things left on the tracks.

“So far we’ve been very lucky, we’ve found like 30 pairs of shoes,” Pedro said.

T ridership numbers at rush hour have been down ever since the Sept. 11 attack, Pedro said, but had been on therise in the last few days—until this weekend.

Like the T, the entire city of Boston—including usually bustling haunts such as Mike’s Pastry in the North End—were empty Friday night.

While the fear of recurring terrorism hit home for many this weekend, the days passed normally, and coming home people found there had been nothing to flee.

“It was foggy when we got back to Boston and we were straining a little bit just to see and make sure the Boston skyline was still there,” Clark said.

—Staff writer Daniel P. Mosteller contributed to the writing of this story.

—Staff writer Lauren R. Dorgan can be reached at dorgan@fas.harvard.edu