America on 'code orange' alert

Washington is braced for the worst today. Intelligence officials suspect information that terrorists plan to bomb American embassies and installations overseas may be a decoy to divert attention from threats to high-profile targets in American cities.

President Bush decided to order a "code orange" alert, warning of a high risk that al Qaeda terrorist cells might strike today on the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The US has learned that al Qaeda has been stockpiling explosives since January.

Senior intelligence officials in Washington said they have information that among the possible targets is the US embassy in Jakarta in Indonesia. The State Department ordered that embassy to be shut down, as well as others in Lebanon, Bahrain, Vietnam, Pakistan and Malaysia.

Yet though the threat is said to be so far away from America's shores, elaborate precautions are being taken in Washington to protect the capital from another humiliating blow.

Vice-President Dick Cheney has been moved to an undisclosed location and will stay there throughout today. It is the second time in as many days that Mr Cheney was moved to a secret location and officials said he is not scheduled to appear at any public events.

Heat-seeking anti-aircraft Stinger missiles have been deployed around Washington for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis 40 years ago.

The new warning of terror attacks is based mainly on information gleaned from an al Qaeda operative being held in the Philippines.

US officials believe it to be ominously similar to the amount and type of intelligence of last summer, which gave no hint that the attacks, when they came, would be aimed at targets on American soil.

The informant is an Arab man who has been in custody for about two months. He told interrogators on Monday that an anniversary attack would involve an explosive and could be a suicide operation.

A top US intelligence official told Fox News he is wary of what he called a "head fake," a scheme whereby the world's attention is focused on a distant region, in order to catch the US by surprise with a domestic attack. The vehicle-mounted and shoulder-launched defence missile system deployed around the Pentagon was originally intended as a training exercise. But Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered the launchers to be loaded with live ammunition and "be prepared to take out any terrorist threat from the skies".

Warned that terrorists might attack mass transport systems, Washington transit authorities have added hundreds of plainclothed and uniformed police officers on its trains, and taken away rubbish bins at subway stations. All transit workers have been trained in detecting toxic substancesand a new team of bombsniffingdogs have been put into service-Digital cameras have been installed on buses. Some stations have chemical sensors.

"We have been thinking the unthinkable," said Washington transit spokesman Steven Taubenkibel.

A database of 600 doctors has been set up, ready to respond in an emergency. The White House has a plan to evacuate the city's 350,000 civil servants within 15 minutes of a terrorist attack or a "credible threat".

A certain fatalism can be detected in interviews with Washingtonians as the city prepares for the possibility of another horror story. Almost 70 percent expect another terrorist attack where they live or work, according to a new poll.

"This is the impact zone," said Peter LaPorte, head of the city's Emergency Management Agency. "The threat has not gone down. We know that we are a target, and each day that goes by, we are lucky."

The US navy has raised its forces in Bahrain, the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet, to the highest state of alert. Navy officials there issued a warning to commercial shipping companies using the Gulf and waters around the Horn of Africa that al Qaeda may be planning attacks on oil tankers.