During the morning rush at a local gym in west London, a DJ is promoting the London Metropolitan Police’s new anti-terror campaign. He noisily encourages listeners “to report suspicious behavior.”
Lunchtime mid-week, there's another delay on the Underground’s Piccadilly Line. Thousands of passengers on one of city’s most popular subway lines wearily disembark as an official politely explains there’s an “unattended bag” at Knightsbridge station which has caused a service disruption.
Since the Madrid train bombings on March 11, hardly a day goes by in Britain without experts debating the nation’s state of readiness for a terrorist attack while the media — quoting high-ranking officials about the inevitability of such a calamity — whips itself into a frenzy about how Britain is sure to be next.
The sense of impending doom was heightened Tuesday morning by the reports that British police arrested eight men in a major anti-terrorist operation and confiscated half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, a key ingredient used for explosive material.
The atmosphere, while nowhere near breaching levels of hysteria and paranoia, does give one pause. Especially for Americans living in Britain, who might feel doubly targeted — as citizens and residents of the two nations that led the war in Iraq.
On alert, but carrying on
But a random sampling of Americans in London suggests that, while concerned, they are mostly unfazed by the possibility of being caught in a terrorist attack.
“We’re just growing up in an age where we’re living in a dangerous time, not as dangerous as the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, but you have to be aware of what’s going on,” said Chuck Cramer, a Los Angeles native who lives with his family in central London.
“At the same time, what’s the solution, move out to the country, where you could be safe and say nothing’s going to happen?”
Roughly 250,000 Americans live in Great Britain, according to the U.S. embassy. Many of them are here on average three or four years and, like Kathryn Pretzel-Shiels, have lived elsewhere abroad.
Pretzel-Shiels works for a large American multinational company and lived in Hong Kong for three years before work moved her and her husband to London four and a half years ago.
Their peripatetic history has cultivated a certain savvy that helps her cope with the raised terrorist threat.
“If I were living in New York or another major city, I’d feel the same way,” said Pretzel-Shiels. “It really is a sense of alert awareness and not putting yourself in a compromising situation.”
Feeling the need to stay informed
The more challenging issue for some Americans, however, is not security but information. “What I feel about [the terrorism situation] is it’s hard to know,” said Amy Noering, a London resident for four years who hails from the New York tri-state area.
Noering is the busy mother of four young children, ranging from three months to seven years old, but she makes an effort to keep abreast of news and current affairs.
The continuing controversy over the absence of missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the 9/11 commission hearings all weigh heavily on her.
“I honestly don’t know how to feel about anything right now,” said Noering. “I’m not sure what the [U.S.] government was telling us before 9/11 wasn’t true. Now all these hearings going on with [U.S. counter-terrorism chief Richard] Clarke and all this stuff, you don’t know who to believe.”
Others say there might be some disinformation, but for a reason. “I think there’s some information [the American government is] not telling us, but I’m not sure I need to know all of it,” said Pretzel-Shiels.
She thinks it would be irresponsible for authorities to disclose everything they know, because that knowledge could also help terrorists. But she added, “I wouldn’t say I have 100 percent confidence in the intelligence community.”
Cramer, however, is impressed by the British government’s efforts to tackle terrorism.
“From what I read in the local papers, it seems to me that the police are very pro-active and in terms of following leads and going after people…who are going to do damage to the city and to its citizens,” he said.
Always vigilant
Nonetheless, as with many others, he says he feels that “something could happen.”
The sense of inevitability of a terrorist attack underscores the modest but cautionary measures many Americans take. Some people, especially those with families, say they minimize their time on the London Underground or refrain from visiting a highly visible tourist attraction like the Tower of London.
Pretzel-Shiels said she encourages everyone to remain vigilant. She explained how she even discussed the issue with her colleagues at work. “If you’re on the underground and you see a black bag and it doesn’t seem to belong to anyone, just say something,” she said. “If people do see something odd, better to say something than not at all.”
Noering said she’s registered her family with the U.S. Embassy. “We make sure our passports are up to date,” she said. “You make sure you have some money on hand.”
Queries to the U.S. Embassy in London about what actions their citizens should take went unanswered, but the embassy website does provide an official point of view.
A “Worldwide Caution Publication Announcement” was just updated last week, following the assassination by Israel of Sheik Ahmed Yassin in Gaza, alerting “U.S. citizens of the heightened threat of terrorist attacks.”
Such attacks, the alert said, can include “suicide operations, hijackings, bombings or kidnappings.”
But Noering, who was living in Japan with her husband when the Aum Shinrikyo cult leaked sarin gas on the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 12 people, says she’s more worried about a dirty bomb going off in the middle of London. It’s the one terrorist act, she says, that might make her think twice about staying in England.
Otherwise, like many of her compatriots, she considers herself “hardy” and “not usually scared off that easily.”
Moreover, none of the people interviewed said they would feel safer back in the United States.
One small consolation, however, is that these Americans in Britain don’t feel singled out. “As an American, this kind of threat doesn’t feel specifically targeted to Americans,” said Noering. “[The terrorist threat] is against English people as well.”
