Terror surveillance was several years old

US OFFICIALS say the detailed surveillance photos and documents that prompted high terror warnings dated from as far back as 2000 and 2001, some of them well before the September 11 attacks.

However, it is unclear whether the individuals who amassed the information are still in the country or plotting.

Nevertheless, top Bush administration officials said yesterday that some of the surveillance was apparently updated as recently as January of this year.

They denied allegations that the public release of the information now, and the raising of the terror alert, were politically motivated. The officials said the information was released now because it was just uncovered in Pakistan.

Fran Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said yesterday on NBC's "Today" show the surveillance actions taken by the plotters were originally done between 2000 and 2001, but were updated, some as recently as January.

"And from what we know of al-Qaida's method ... they do them years in advance and then update them before they actually launch the attack," she said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that once federal officials get such information, "they do have a responsibility not only to evaluate it, but to get it out."

But some Democrats have raised concerns that the timing of the release of the information had more to do with politics than with fears that terrorists were about to strike.

Ms Townsend and other officials said the information was only recently discovered. "We've only gotten the intelligence, I would say, in the last 72 hours," she said Tuesday.

At a news conference yesterday, Ms Townsend denied that political considerations affected the timing of the intelligence disclosures, which came the week after Democrats nominated John Kerry as their presidential candidate.

"It had nothing to do with the Democratic National Convention," Ms Townsend said. US officials have said that the trove of hundreds of photos, sketches and written documents that led to Sunday's warning about new risks of terror attacks came largely from a Pakistani computer engineer, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, also known as Abu Talha, who was captured in mid-July in Pakistan.

Officials are now following investigative leads, as they try to learn more about possible plots against the apparent targets. These include the Citigroup Center building and the New York Stock Exchange in New York, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington and Prudential Financial Inc's headquarters in Newark, New Jersey. The FBI is analyzing the information about the surveillance of these five buildings, obtained after Khan's capture.