http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/25/politics/campaign/25threat.html?th
Vast Force Is Deployed for Security at Convention
"The New York Police Department and the largest armada of land, air and maritime forces ever assembled to provide security at a national political gathering are being deployed in New York for the Republican convention... They said yesterday that they were planning an intentionally huge response to intelligence that Al Qaeda hoped to carry out an attack to disrupt this year's elections.
"The country's terror alert level, which was raised early this month, will remain at orange status, or high alert, throughout the Republican National Convention and probably well beyond, according to several senior intelligence officials. They said they were increasingly concerned about an attack, even though there was no specific intelligence indicating a strike during the convention, which begins Monday.
"Have we collected intelligence that there is going to be a hit in the financial district during the Republican National Convention?" said Pasquale J. D'Amuro, the assistant director in charge of the New York office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "No. But intelligence we have collected indicates that Al Qaeda still desires to attack both domestically and abroad. They want to kill Americans."
With the alert level ratcheted up, even in the absence of a specific threat, thousands of Republicans arriving in New York are likely to be subjected to a new round of potentially confusing public warnings about the risk of attack alongside soothing official exhortations to enjoy the party, which will take place inside a security envelope surrounding Madison Square Garden.
"Attacking Madison Square Garden would be like pulling a bank job at Fort Knox," a senior counterterrorism official said, referring to the security measures being put into place this week. "It will be the hardest target in the world."
..... The backbone of security is being provided by the 37,000-member New York Police Department, which has a budget larger than all but 19 of the world's standing armies. To prevent an attack, the department will flood the streets with officers and employ high and low technology, from seven surveillance helicopters to plainclothes detectives traveling the subways and eyeballing other riders.
Up to 10,000 officers, many reassigned from narcotics and other duties, will be part of an enormous show of force around Madison Square Garden. That display will include special heavily armed "Hercules" antiterror squads, snipers and phalanxes of officers set up around the arena to search buses and trucks before they enter the area. In addition to the helicopters, several of which can feed close-up video surveillance images to mobile command centers on the ground, 26 launches will patrol waterways, and officers will use 181 bomb-sniffing dogs, many of them borrowed from other law enforcement agencies.
"We can cover all the bases with 37,000 police officers," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said yesterday. "As big as the R.N.C. deployment is, we have a reserve on top of that. New York would be a poor choice for the malicious-minded to try anything, especially now."
Mr. Kelly has said that virtually the entire department will be mobilized next week...
Not counting the costs incurred by federal agencies, security in New York is estimated at about $60 million, out of a convention budget of about $166 million, as concerns have broadened to cover not only the week of the convention, but also the weeks before and after it. Police are girding for protests, including a planned march on Sunday, which organizers have predicted will attract as many as 250,000 people, and more spontaneous demonstrations."
And a handy map:
http://www.rncprotestrights.org/map.html