Dean WAS right

The intelligence that caused Tom Ridge to interupt our Sunday afternoons with a new terror warning, setting the stage for Bush's announcement of his support for a terrorism Czar turns out to be years old, reports the NY Times:

Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terrorist plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

So, why create a stir by raising the threat level and forcing New York, New Jersey and D.C. to increase security? Well in the companion Washington Post story, they have this:

There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."