From NBC Bay Area
Al Qaeda Ad of SFO Tram: "Assemble Your Bomb"
By Stephanie Chuang
A stock photo of San Francisco International Airport featured in an international publication – reportedly run by al Qaeda - is sounding off alarms on Capitol Hill, especially as the year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings nears.
At a Homeland Security hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, said he was first alerted by a top law enforcement official in the Bay area to the picture of what appears to be the AirTrain at SFO. The caption was what was most alarming, reading in part, “Simply stand up, pack your tools of destruction. Assemble your bomb. Ready for detonation.”...
Steve Weber, who works at UC Berkeley’s School of Information, specializes in the international and national security. By phone he told NBC Bay Area that it is still something worth taking seriously because propaganda and real recruiting are all the same thing in this environment.
“This is an extremist group for which all those things are the same,” said Weber.
He added that the U.S. government would be able to determine fairly quickly if it was a stock photo or reconnaissance by terrorist, but said if it was the latter, it wouldn’t have been so easily found by Western officials....