"if something doesn't go boom, nothing is going to be done"

From USA Today's "U.S. didn't warn Las Vegas of terror threats":

A year after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Justice Department obtained video surveillance tapes suggesting terrorists were targeting Las Vegas casinos but authorities never alerted the public as they discussed whether a warning might hurt tourism or increase the casinos' legal liability, internal memos show.

[Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman] said Monday he was never told about the tapes uncovered in Detroit and Spain in 2002, and had been assured by the FBI there were no credible threats against his city. "If I were told, I would certainly tell the public..."

But memos and e-mails between federal prosecutors, obtained by The Associated Press, say Las Vegas authorities were alerted to some of the footage by Aug. 30, 2002. Later, numerous local law enforcement officials were invited by a senior FBI agent to view the footage, but most spurned the invitation [out of a fear of incurring liability], the memos say...

The prosecutor said he later asked a Las Vegas police officer, who had seen the tape and flown to Detroit to help, why more wasn't done. "This officer told me that the amount of money that travels through Las Vegas on a daily, weekly and monthly basis - if something doesn't go boom, nothing is going to be done," he said.

Neither the mayor, the casinos, nor the local cops come off too good in the rest of the report.

Terrorism · Mon, 08/09/2004 - 17:13 · · Importance: 1