US feared Somalian extremist attack on Obama's oath-taking ceremony - India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

As millions of people converged in Washington last year to witness President Barack Obama take the oath of office, security officials in the country were concerned about a possible terror attack from extremists travelling from Somalia. According to reports, a group of Somalis was believed to have crossed from Canada to detonate a bomb as Obama took the oath, and for 72 hours before the ceremony the intelligence agencies worked around the clock trying to figure out whether the threat was real. "All the data points suggested there was a real threat evolving quickly that had an overseas component," Fox News quoted Juan Carlos Zarate, President George W. Bush's deputy national security adviser for terrorism, as saying. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the only Cabinet member who had been sworn in by January 20, was spirited off to a secret location during the inauguration in case the worst happened. In the end, the report turned out to be false and the story was little more than a rumour, fuelled by from certain media reports.