Senator Shuts D.C. Office....

I found this quite odd. Does Senator Dayton know something no one else seems to know? Or is he just paraniod? Sorry, I was not sure if I should put this here or in Politics and whatnot, move if you see fit.

WASHINGTON � Sen. Mark Dayton (search) has decided to shut down his Senate office on Capitol Hill until after the election on Nov. 2 because of what he considers to be "an unacceptably greater risk" to the safety of his staff and constituents.
Dayton, D-Minn., said he made the decision based on a top secret intelligence briefing he and other members received on national security. His staff will move from the Russell Senate Office Building (search) to his Minnesota office and to Senate space off Capitol Hill.

Rest of article is here:

www.foxnews.com...

I know everyone is one edge, but is up with this guy? Guess I should restock my Y2K bunker huh?

[edit on 10/12/2004 by bobafett1972]

Well, I know he questioned the 9/11 comission stating that NORAD lied about 9/11:

Mark Dayton has become the first U.S. senator to challenge the rush to consensus that "The 9/11 Commission Report" settles the open questions of Sept. 11, 2001.

In hearings last Friday, Sen. Dayton (D-MN) raised an obvious point: if the timeline of air defense response as promoted in the Kean Commission's best-selling book is correct, then the timeline presented repeatedly by NORAD during the last two years was completely wrong. Yet now no one at NORAD is willing to comment on their own timeline!

When the official story of 9/11 can be changed repeatedly without anyone ever being held accountable, we have no right to ever again expect honest government. Please read the following story and do your part to support Sen. Dayton for highlighting the contradiction, and to encourage the media to follow up.

www.911truth.org...

So I don't know if this is the reason or not.

IMHO the public should be made privy to whatever intel it was that led this Senator to shut down his office. If a Senator is going to close his doors over fear of terrorism the public should have the option of being able to make a similar choice for their own safety.

I'm not saying the Government should come out and tell everyone to evacuate D.C., but something this Senator heard has HIM spooked enough to get out of Dodge. The Government always says "don't alter your lives or the terrorists have won", if they now have a Senator that IS altering his life based on intel, they owe it to the public to be honest with what they know.

Jemison

This is now in TA-Threats, so if you want to MODs, I guess remove my thread?

Guess the terrorists are winning. We are starting to run and hide. I'm waiting for schools to start having practice terrorism drills like the bomb drills in the 50s. ;-)

When multiple Senators remove their staff, I will become concerned. If he is serious, I respect him for protecting his stafff. If this is a political stunt, he should deal with the consequences.

I expected this to be a story on the news last night but there was nothing mentioned. I still strongly believe that Tom Ridge needs to address this. The Senator said he won't bring his sons to the Capital, he didn't say he wouldn't take his sons to NY, FL, etc. So to me that says that maybe they DO have specific info on at least the location.

Jemison

It seems like our gov't officials are contradicting themselves on this one, doesn't it. On the one hand, they've been telling us for awhile now that there's a known threat to NY, Washington, DC, and New Jersey up until the election, and I am sure that our senators and such have been given a little more information about this than us, which maybe has led this one to determine that the risk was too great for his staff. But, then they turn around and say well, we know nothing about this??

I don't know....
I'm just glad that I live in a small hick town far away from these places that a terrorist couldn't find on a map if he had to.

Don't these threats stike anyone as scare tactics? I mean even if done under the best intentions. It's always something like "We have a high threat level, we just don't know who, where, what, when, or how, we just know we may be in great danger". Yeah, and there may be a car accident on the road too, but we still go out driving. All the big warnings basically result in nothing, and the incidents that DO happen, there is really no warning on. I'm not to fond of Micheal Moore, but I think he did have a good point on this subject. The blanket warning. I think someone mentioned recently that the UK stopped listening to them because it got out of hand.

I am not againt terror warnings, but only use them if they are useful. Otherwise it's assumed that something bad could happen. Life has always been that way. Anything can happen bad, sometimes it's a terrorist attack. I wish it wasn't used as a political tool.

Originally posted by snoopy
Don't these threats stike anyone as scare tactics? I mean even if done under the best intentions. It's always something like "We have a high threat level, we just don't know who, where, what, when, or how, we just know we may be in great danger".

I agree with you whole-heartedly snoopy. The thing that struck me was I can't remember a Senator/Congressman/Government type doing this before. "I'm leaving, it's not safe here, plus now he's saying he wouldn't to New York, Florida, blah, blah either. Really surprised Ridge hasn't come out and said something. Either this guy is a little off(who isn't), or maybe he does know something?

What bothers me is that this Senator didn't pack up after the last public statements were made. He did it WELL AFTER the last public warnings were made and he did it based on intel he received that was not released to the public. I adamently believe that people in D.C., and the other areas that this guy says he won't be going to, should be given the EXACT same intel that this guy was given so that they can make thier own choices in regard to if they want to leave town or stick it out.

People are sick of the same old warnings that say they dont know details on a when, where, how of an attack. I think it's time to give a NEW type of warning and see how the public reacts. Maybe the general public would be BETTER able to deal with more specific terror threats and probably a terror attack would be easier to thwart if people had a better ideo of what and who to look for.

Jemison

Jemison

qoute -Elaborating on the reasoning behind his decision, Dayton also said "the report I read didn't identify specific location."

"But the 9/11 commission concluded that the fourth hijacked plane on that date that crashed in Pennsylvania was returning to destroy the Capitol. And al Qaeda has a history of going back to those places where it's unsuccessful and attempting again," he told Blitzer.

---------------------------------

Well, I mean by that logic, why ever go to the capitol again? Wouldn't it be irresponsible to ever go back so long as there is always a potential threat of terrorist attack? Maybe we should all move underground. ;-)

snoopy put it correctly, they do "return", as they did with the WTC.
They always seem to try to finish what they start.

The thing here is what is making the Senator decide to close up
shop at this particular time? Why now?

"I got the same briefing he did. So did 534 other senators and congressmen," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y. "Obviously, there's a high threat to the country -- New York and Washington are always in the cross hairs. But it's no different now than it was a month ago or two months ago."

"Why he's decided to do this -- either he's overreacting, whether he's showboating or what, I really don't know -- but he's sending a terrible signal to the country that's really an abdication of responsibility and leadership."

I agree with this Rep., no one else left, what's the deal.

But Dayton responded that protecting staff members was more important than sending a signal.

"To leave our young staffs there as human shields so we can make a statement, I think, is the height of irresponsibility," he told Blitzer

Human shields? Wow, kind of extreme isn't it? I'd be pissed if I lived in this guys district.


Here's the rest of the story: www.cnn.com...