August 26, 2004
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Reuters) - It is "only a matter of time" before militants try to launch a seaborne attack on the United States, but threats of terrorism are greater abroad because they are avoiding hardened U.S. targets, a senior U.S. military official said on Wednesday.
General Ralph "Ed" Eberhart, who as head of the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) is responsible for defending U.S. land, sea and air, also said North Korea posed the greatest threat to the United States of any country -- as opposed to non-state actors such as al Qaeda -- even as Washington tries to negotiate with Pyongyang.
Eberhart, who is also head of the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), said the danger of a seaborne attack was one reason why he advocated a modification of NORAD's bi-national mission to include the seas as well as the skies.
"I believe it's just a matter of time until the terrorists try to use a ... maritime attack against us," he said. "I believe that attack could come in terms of bringing a ship into port, whether it's (carrying) high explosives or whether it's weapons of mass destruction."
Speaking to reporters at NORTHCOM and NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo., Eberhart said that despite improvements in U.S. maritime defenses since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, they "are not as mature, are not as sophisticated or as elegant as our monitoring of the airspace" through NORAD. More work needs to be done, he said.
THREATS OF ATTACK
Eberhart said he had no doubt militant groups such as the Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network would like to strike the United States before the November presidential elections and remained focused on high-profile targets like New York or Washington.
But Eberhart said he personally believed sharply improved security in the United States since Sept. 11 made the threat of an attack abroad more likely.
"I do believe that (it is) because of what we have done since 9/11 (that) you've not seen a follow-up attack here but you have seen attacks elsewhere," he said, in references to deadly militant attacks in Madrid, the Middle East and Asia.
"I would like to think ... that the threat is greater overseas because we've taken the actions we have taken and made it more difficult to be successful here. I firmly believe that," he said.
Within the United States, Eberhart said militants had shown interest in attacking highly symbolic targets, oil refineries, nuclear plants, or anything that would make a "big splash." Available intelligence did not, he said, indicate a change in these goals.
PROCEDURES IN PLACE
Since Sept. 11, the U.S. military had also put procedures in place to shoot down commercial aircraft if needed to avoid the kind of tragedy of Sept. 11.
"We're prepared to do that (shoot down planes) because we know if we don't do that, then there likely are hundreds if not thousands of others on the ground that are going to die too," he said.
He said NORAD had scrambled fighter jets some 1,600 times since Sept. 11 to check on anomalies in the air -- such as threatening passengers or inadvertent messages from pilots signaling a hijacking -- and none had turned out to be a serious threat requiring a shootdown order.
Asked what countries currently posed the greatest threat to the United States, Eberhart only mentioned North Korea.
"As you know, we are building missile defense capability predominantly for North Korea. I'm sure they're a wild card in our book," he said.
Yet the United States was doing everything it could, he said, to reconcile its differences with North Korea, especially concerning its nuclear capability.
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