“On August 3 [2004], the Washington Post reported that the ‘new’ information [Department of Homeland Security Director Tom] Ridge was referring to when he made his dramatic announcement two days earlier [that raised the threat level to orange in specific locations] actually was old, and that it pertained to surveillance activities that occurred before September 2001. One senior law enforcement official was quoted as saying ‘there is nothing right now that we’re hearing that is new. …Why did we go to this level? …I still don’t know that.’ Virtually the entire basis of the alert were files found on a laptop computer discovered in Pakistan, but none of the files were dated past September 11, 2001.”
– Ian S. Lustick, Trapped in the War on Terror, Page 111