Terrorists To Strike U.S. Malls on Halloween?

Rumors of terrorism on American shopping malls will begin in a flurry of twitter posts and e-mails this year. To get ahead of the panic that may set in for some people, here is the basic premise of another terrorist attack on the United States. Basically most rumors of an attack will look like this.

"Hi All -
I think you all know that I don't send out hoaxes and don't do the reactionary thing and send out anything that crosses my path. This one, however, is a friend of a friend and I've given it enough credibility in my mind that I'm writing it up and sending it out to all of you.

My friend's friend was dating a guy from Afghanistan up until a month ago. She had a date with him around 9/6 and was stood up. She was understandably upset and went to his home to find it completely emptied. On 9/10, she received a letter from her boyfriend explaining that he wished he could tell her why he had left and that he was sorry it had to be like that.

The part worth mentioning is that he BEGGED her not to get on any commercial airlines on 9/11 and to not to go any malls on Halloween.

As soon as everything happened on the 11th, she called the FBI and has since turned over the letter. This is not an email that I've received and decided to pass on. This came from a phone conversation with a long-time friend of mine last night. I may be wrong, and I hope I am. However, with one of his warnings being correct and devastating, I'm not willing to take the chance on the second and wanted to make sure that people I cared about had the same information that I did."

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I checked on Snopes to see what their take on this was:

An anonymous internet e-mail message has been widely circulated pertaining to an Arab male who warned his wife not to fly on September 11, 2001 and not to go to any shopping mall on October 31, 2001.

The e-mail further states that the Arab male disappeared prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. The FBI has conducted an inquiry into the source of this e-mail and determined that the alleged threat is not credible.

A public information officer at the FBI's National Press Office told us that they've fielded many phone calls about this message, they've checked it out, and they have received no letter of warning from a girl with an Afghan boyfriend. This story fits neatly into the genre of a number of similar rumors about helped terrorists or compassionate Arabs who are moved to offer specific warnings about upcoming attacks, and thus should most likely be dismissed as just more of the same. Helped terrorists of lore offer such heads up by way of thanks for a kindness done them. "Compassionate Arabs" of rumor offer such intelligence to favored neighbors, usually just before they themselves pack up and leave in the middle of the night. Dozens, if not hundreds, of versions of such tales abound, each told by someone who swears he heard it from someone who knows the person who had the encounter.)

Such snippets of lore swing on the belief that those who have foreknowledge of  destruction to come would jeopardize the outcome of those events by warning others. Terrorists may very well form friendships among the folk they've temporarily taken on the coloration of, but friendships stop at the line where they might interfere with operations. To think otherwise is to surrender to a form of that can only be characterized as appallingly wishful.

22 Photographs of 9/11