School data not tied to terror threat

By Curt Anderson
The Associated Press

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WASHINGTON — Federal officials yesterday said there is no terrorist connection to a computer disk found in Iraq that contained information about schools in Oregon and five other states.

The disk was made by an unidentified Iraqi man who was doing research and had no connections to al-Qaida or the Iraqi insurgents battling U.S. forces, according to the FBI. The man did have links to the Baath party that ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein, but that's true of many former government officials and community leaders.

Material on the disk appeared to be downloaded randomly from a publicly accessible Education Department Web site and included such things as manuals on workplace safety, crisis-management studies and building-security diagrams.

It also contained an Education Department report on school-crisis planning that was published in May 2003.

"It's not about schools, it's about policy," said FBI Agent William Evanina, spokesman for the FBI field office in Newark, N.J. "There's no terrorism threat to these schools."

The school districts included Salem, Ore. Others were San Diego and La Puente, Calif.; Fort Myers, Fla.; Jones County, Ga.; Birch Run, Mich.; and Franklinville and Rumson, N.J. The FBI contacted officials in the communities last month and told them about the disk and what it contained.

Although there was no indication of a terror threat, the FBI decided to contact local officials out of an abundance of caution.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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