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By Susan Schmidt and Bob
Woodward
US intelligence officials have told members
of Congress there is a high probability that terrorists associated
with Osama bin Laden will try to launch another major attack
on American targets here or abroad in the near future.
Based on what officials described as credible new information,
the FBI and the CIA have assessed the chances of a second
attempt to attack the United States as very high, sources
said yesterday.
At a briefing October 2, in response to a senator's question
about the gravity of the threat, one intelligence official
said there is a "100
percent" chance of an attack should the United States
strike Afghanistan, according to sources familiar with the
briefing.
One senior official said some of the new intelligence is "very
real." But the official cautioned that some of it may
be braggadocio or even disinformation designed to discourage
the United States from retaliating for the Sept. 11 attacks
on New York and Washington.
The new information is worrisome enough that officials at
the White House, the Justice Department and the State Department
have huddled in recent days to figure out the best way to
communicate their concern to the public, a source with knowledge
of those discussions said.
The concern about another attack is based on intelligence
from sources in England, Germany, Afghanistan and Pakistan,
according to a source familiar with what congressional intelligence
committees have been told. Egyptian, Somali and Pakistani
elements of bin Laden's network are thought to be involved.
Members of the intelligence committees declined to comment
on the briefings they have received, which are classified.
But their public comments, and remarks by Attorney General
John D. Ashcroft on Sunday, highlight the danger the country
continues to face.
"We have to believe there will be another attempt by
a terrorist group to hit us again," Sen. Richard C. Shelby
(Ala.), ranking Republican on the Senate intelligence committee,
said yesterday. "You can just about bet on it. That's
just something you have to believe will happen."
Shelby declined to discuss specific intelligence information
on the plans of bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network that
were provided in a classified briefing Tuesday by counterterrorism
officials from the FBI, CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Ashcroft warned earlier this week that there is a "likelihood
of additional terrorist activity," and that the "risks
go up" once the United States responds with military
action. "We think that there is a very serious threat
of additional problems now," Ashcroft said. "And
frankly, as the United States responds, that threat may escalate."
The Justice Department sought to play down that warning slightly
Monday, after Ashcroft's words received more media attention
than officials had expected.
"Ashcroft's and [Secretary of State Colin L.] Powell's
people and the White House are working on how to word their
warnings," a source familiar with multiagency discussions
said. "The government doesn't want to panic people."
But, he added, "The government is definitely preparing
for a counterstrike by bin Laden."
Officials at the White House declined to comment yesterday.
Government officials are fearful of attacks at any of hundreds
or thousands of locations, including symbols of American power
and culture, such as government buildings in Washington and
centers of entertainment. They are concerned about truck bomb
and car bomb explosions that could be detonated near natural
gas lines, power plants and other sites that one source described
as "exposed infrastructure."
The FBI has taken a particular
interest in crop-dusting airplanes for fear they could be
used in a chemical or biological weapons attack.
Mohamed Atta, one of the suspected leaders of the Sept. 11
attack, expressed a keen interest in the planes. Zacarias
Moussaoui, a French-Moroccan man in custody as a material
witness, reportedly had materials about crop dusting in his
possession when he was detained in August.
The overriding goal, a senior official said, is to make the
United States a "hard target" for terrorists.
But US intelligence and
law enforcement agencies do not have specific information
on the nature of future attacks.
The Coast Guard is boarding and searching ships in New York,
Boston and other harbors, and security has been stepped up
around nuclear power plants, oil pipelines, refineries and
other potential targets.
The FBI has found no links between any of the 19 alleged hijackers
or their possible accomplices and any of the 1,000
to 2,000 suspected terrorist sympathizers in this country,
including known Al Qaeda supporters, lawmakers
were told.
The group that conducted the Sept. 11 attacks and anyone who
might have helped it operated as a closed unit and there may
be other such cells as yet undetected by law enforcement,
some members of Congress were told.
"The investigative case has to take a back seat to preventing
the next terrorist act," a senior law enforcement official
said. "That comes right from the top, from the president
of the United States on down."
In preparation, the FBI has a plan in place to go "full
tilt" for 72 hours whenever the president decides to
make a move against bin Laden, al Qaeda or Afghanistan's ruling
Taliban government, the official said. At the investigation's
command center in FBI headquarters, a team of analysts and
agents has been working around the clock sifting through reports
of potential threats since Sept. 11.
US officials acknowledge it is difficult to understand the
motivation behind some of the threats they have learned about.
In response to threats from bin Laden's network that were
detected in June and July, for example, officials made decisions
to abandon some US embassies and to move Navy ships in foreign
ports out to sea. Now, officials have concluded, the threats
may have been disinformation designed to occupy officials'
attention, or to allow bin Laden operatives to observe American
counterterror lockdown methods, a knowledgeable source said.
Shelby said law enforcement agencies believe terrorists will
do something unexpected, and thus the agencies are trying
to think "out of the box" in anticipating what might
be ahead. However, he noted, bin Laden has been known to return
to the same targets repeatedly, such as the World Trade Center,
which terrorists with possible ties to bin Laden's group bombed
in 1993.
In 1999, a terrorist cell linked to bin Laden was thwarted
in what one participant later testified was a plot to bomb
Los Angeles International Airport.
A senior government official said yesterday that if al Qaeda
follows its normal pattern, "other attacks are in various
stages of planning." The US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,
which were bombed in 1998, were first surveiled as targets
in 1994, according to court testimony earlier this year.
The government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity,
said bin Laden's terrorist organization "likes to mix
tactics and targets."
Under that theory, more
airplane hijackings seem less likely, because security has
been increased. Ground-based operations, he said, seem more
probable.
Washington Post October
5, 2001; Page A01
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