Eiffel Tower Bomb Plot Broken Up?

That's what's being reported by Hot Air. The French version appeared at Le Monde.

A Babelfish translation of the page follows (and I've cleaned up the translation a bit):

The services of the direction of the monitoring of the territory (DST) seek to identify the authors of a collected worrying message, Thursday January 10, by the civil controllers of Portuguese aviation. It acts of a conversation intercepted at dawn on the short waves making state of terrorist threats on Paris. The protagonists of this exchange, using "vague and confusing" language according to a police source, evoked an attack against the Eiffel Tower.

Very quickly, the Portuguese authorities alerted their French counterparts which, since, try to find the transmitter. This new message "did not throw into a panic" - according to the terms of a police officer - the services of French against-espionage. But it is added to other threats emitted these last days on the Internet sites djihadists, which invite the "brothers to strike Paris".

The device safety put in the capital for several months has not been reinforced. "It was not necessary to raise the alert, since we have been in Code red for several months, the prefecture of police force indicated. It is the highest level before the scarlet alarm which is put effect when there are attacks."

Saved from islamist terrorism since the wave of attacks of 1995-1996, France seems new being taken for target. On Internet, the Islamists, using clandestine forums or not, have increased anti-French diatribes. A message, sent on January 3 in Arabic, projected "to put a term at the continuation of the ambitions of president Sarkozy in the Maghreb countries" and to cause "a collapse of the French economy at the international level".

INQUIRE PRELIMINARY January 5, an American center charged to supervise the communications of the network of Usama Bin Laden had located on Internet of the threats "against Paris and its mayor Bertrand Delanoë" in order to involve "the fall of Nicolas Sarkozy". In addition to personalities and the Eiffel tower, the evoked operations would aim popular sites "and at high economic value". As often when such threats are uttered, the authors speak about the Champs-Elysées, the Roissy-Charles-de-Gaulle airport, or the Quarter surrounding the Defense Department.

These calls, launched for the majority on the site salafist Al-Ekhlass, by a Net surfer being expressed under the pseudonym of Murabit Muwaded, led Paris law enforcement authorities to open a preliminary investigation. The prefecture of police force and the services of the State reinforced the protection of Mr. Delanoë. These threats are taken with the serious one. The more so as they occur after the execution, December 24, by a salafist group related to Al-Qaida, of four French tourists who circulated in Mauritania.

This attack, follow-up of explicit threats against French interests in North Africa, had pushed the Ministry for Foreign Affairs to be required, for the first time since its creation thirty years ago, the cancellation of the Paris-Dakar Rally, and the capture of four Frenchmen in Mauratania. It is in this context that - according to the Barber of January 11 - French police persons in charge have just gone in several Maghreb countries in order to start again the antiterrorist co-operation.

It would appear that it was the Portugese who first spotted the ominous language and alerted the French, who carried out further investigations. However, French authorities had been getting lots of intel about plots against French targets, especially the Eiffel Tower.

It's also interesting that other media outlets haven't picked up on the story as yet.

UPDATE:
The British Daily Mail has picked up the story, and notes that French authorities had broken up a terror ring in 2005 that sought to blow up the Eiffel Tower. The report notes that security is tight at the tower.

Well, having been there this past March, I can recall the long lines to go up in the elevators. There is screening in the lobby area, and police are present in the crowds that gather, but it is still possible to cause a mass casualty attack in the vicinity simply with the large numbers present. Whether the terrorists could bring down the tower is a question that law enforcement has to deal with on a daily basis and adjust accordingly. The Daily Mail notes that security at the tower has been beefed up.