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Baltimore Mayor: Feds Quiet About Search
BRIAN WITTE
Associated Press
BALTIMORE - Mayor Martin O'Malley said Wednesday city officials should have been told about a federal team that reportedly
searched for low-level radioactive weapons last month.
"They're always welcome to come here," O'Malley said. "I hope they spent the night and rented hotel rooms,
but they really should have notified us."
O'Malley said he spoke with the FBI's acting special agent-in-charge in Maryland, Jennifer Smith Love, early Wednesday
morning, after reading a story Wednesday in The Washington Post that federal teams had been sent to five cities, including
Baltimore.
O'Malley said he believed the operation was conducted as a precaution, not because of specific threat.
"I believe that from the information I have this morning from the FBI there was no specific information about Baltimore,"
the mayor said.
The newspaper reported that the federal government sent scores of nuclear scientists with radiation detection equipment
hidden in briefcases last month to Baltimore, Washington, New York, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
O'Malley said he called Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to ask for more details and said it's possible the operation
was more of "a test, or a drill."
O'Malley said Love told him that the FBI's Baltimore field office also was not aware of the operation.
O'Malley, who chairs the U.S. Conference of Mayors' homeland security task force, has pushed for better local, state and
federal coordination on homeland defense measures.
"Our federal government is a very, very, very large bureaucratic animal and the fact that the FBI wasn't notified
about this gives you an indication of just how much further we need to go with regard to coordination," the mayor said.
O'Malley said the city has used its own radiological detection equipment since 2002 to search for a so-called "dirty
bomb" at downtown events with large crowds. As an example, he said fire personnel went through the corridors and perimeter
of M&T Bank Stadium at a recent football game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
"In other words, ever since the threat of a dirty bomb came high on all of our screens as Americans, we've taken
every precaution we can against such an event, and that's our normal MO," O'Malley said.
A "dirty bomb" is a conventional explosive is used to disperse radioactive material.
The mayor said his own security detail uses pager-sized devices designed to detect radioactivity.
© 2004 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.
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