By Mark Rhoads
Many news organizations on Thursday night were reporting that US Attorney General Albert Gonalez will hold a news conference on Friday presumably to talk more about the arrest in Miami of seven suspected terrorists investigated over the last year by an undercover FBI agent. Reports say the agent posed as a radical Islamicist who took the al Qaeda oath and became part of a domestic cell. The Chicago angle is that the Miami cell may have been planning an attack against Sears Tower and other sites in south Florida. Sears Tower stands at 110 stories and 1,450 feet is still the tallest building in America. For 25 years from 1973 until 1998 the Sears Tower was also the tallest in the world. It was surpassed in 1998 by Petronas Towers, only 33 feet taller than Sears, in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia and that building was passed in 2004 by The Taipei 101 on Taiwan which is now 1,670 feet. Before 9-11-2001, few people would have looked at the Sears Tower as vulnerable but it is even more vulnerable than the World Trade Center. It is a very easy target against the skyline of Chicago for an air attack and a very tempting target due to its status as tallest in the US. This post is just a restatement of the obvious, Chicago continues to have a big stake in always improving homeland security procedures. Sensible vigilance continues to be necessary.
