White House Monitoring London Evacuations

WASHINGTON – President Bush was briefed by senior aides Thursday on the evacuation of three London subway stations two weeks to the day after mass transit attacks there killed 56 people including four suicide bombers.

“We’re monitoring the situation closely,” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

He said Bush was briefed on the London developments by White House chief of staff Andy Card and Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, at the end of the president’s regular intelligence briefing.

At the Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Michael Chertoff was described as closely monitoring events. But spokeswoman Kathleen Montgomery said that Chertoff had no immediate plans to raise the U.S. terror alert beyond current levels.

U.S. mass transit systems remain on code orange, or high alert, since the London bombings two weeks ago, but the rest of the country is at yellow, signifying an elevated risk.

U.S. officials are unaware of any specific intelligence indicating a similar attack on the homeland, Montgomery said.