Steve Quayle News Alerts

May 20, 2002

The United States faces the “inevitable” challenge of dealing with the threat of walk-in suicide bombers like those plaguing Israel, FBI director Robert Mueller warned Monday. Mueller was the latest U.S. official to respond to a warning issued over the weekend by Vice President Dick Cheney that additional terrorist attacks targeted at America are “almost certain.” Earlier Monday, a top Democratic lawmaker warned that al-Qaida was not the only group posing a threat.

MUELLER, SPEAKING to a meeting of the National Association of District Attorneys in Alexandria, Va., said he considers the use of suicide bombers in the United States “inevitable.”
“I think we will see that in the future,” Mueller said in response to a question after a speech.
Mueller also said the degree of fanaticism an informant must exhibit to get into the inner circle of a terrorist group makes it difficult for law enforcement agencies to penetrate such organizations and prevent attacks.
“I wish I could be more optimistic,” he said.
His comments came only hours after Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned that the attack threat is not limited to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, the group blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

TWO OTHER GROUPS CITED
Several international terrorist groups “have a similar desire to attack the United States,” Graham said on NBC’s “Today” show, citing the Mideastern groups Hizballah and Islamic Egyptian Jihad as two that pose a threat to the United States.
“Over the next three to five years, the chances of another terrorist attack, which probably won’t be in the form of hijacked airplanes and hopefully not at the scale of what happened September 11th ... inside the United States is almost a certainty,” Graham said.
Neither Hizballah nor Islamic Egyptian Jihad has been linked directly to activities on U.S. soil, and such an attack would represent a major change in their tactics.
Graham’s reiteration of the warning indicated bipartisan unity on efforts to heighten awareness that the terrorism threat is not waning, even as Democrats press the argument that the Bush administration should have been better prepared for the Sept. 11 attacks based on intelligence gathered in the weeks before hijackers took over four commercial jetliners.

COMMUNICATIONS ACTIVITY
The warnings from Graham and Cheney come amid an “enhanced amount of (communications) activity” picked up by U.S. intelligence indicating that a terrorist attack may be planned against either the United States or U.S. interests abroad, a senior administration official told NBC News over the weekend.
The heightened “chatter” resembles the increase in communications that occurred before Sept. 11, the official said.
Sources told NBC News that the communiques have been general and indicated that the Office of Homeland Security’s threat condition remains at yellow, indicating an elevated threat risk for the United States. There has been no change in the threat condition despite the increased activity.

Law enforcement officials warned Sunday that a nonspecific threat had been made against the water supply of the Orlando, Fla., area, home to major theme parks and tens of thousands of tourists each day.
The FBI told law enforcement officials about the threat but did not say when or where it was made or who made it, Joyce Sankey Dawley, regional director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said Sunday. The threat hadn’t been corroborated independently, said FBI Supervisory Agent Bill Hajeski, who said he couldn’t comment further.
Officials said security at the area’s water facilities was increased and said there is no evidence the water supply had been damaged.

WSJ: FAA was silent on Moussaoui arrest

The FBI has also learned that al-Qaida terrorists have discussed the possibility of renting apartments and rigging them with explosives, according to an FBI spokesperson, who said the agency is not sure if this proposed action has ever gone beyond the discussion stage. The FBI stressed that it was not releasing an official warning and decided to communicate the warning out of caution, not because officials believe any threat is imminent.
The FBI also told NBC that earlier in the week the agency instructed all field offices to caution managers of residential properties about a possible al-Qaida attack.

CHENEY DENIES WARNING IGNORED
The warnings of the continuing threat of terrorism come against a backdrop of increasing political finger-pointing over the Sept. 11 attacks and new criticism of the Bush administration by Democrats who contend that warning signs last summer about impending terror attacks were ignored.
Cheney, in an appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” denounced the “feeding frenzy” of criticism that followed disclosures last week that Bush had been told in an intelligence briefing Aug. 6 that terrorists linked to bin Laden could be planning a hijacking aimed at Americans.

Cheney: ’Answer is a good offense’
May 19, 2002 — In an interview with Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Vice President Dick Cheney states that a good offense and good intelligence are the keys to stopping further attacks.The vice president said he has “a deep sense of anger that anyone would suggest that the president of the United States had advance knowledge that he failed to act on. I thought it was beyond the pale.”
He also urged restraint by lawmakers, including leading congressional Democrats, who are suggesting an expansion of inquiries into what the White House and federal law enforcement knew about possible terror attacks.

BIN LADEN VIDEO QUESTIONED
Cheney’s comments came as analysts pored over a videotape in which al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden reportedly says that any country siding with Israel is a target for Islamic terrorists.
The British government said Monday that it plans to examine the tape showing the Saudi dissident that was received by the al-Ansaar Islamic news agency, based in the English city of Birmingham.
Al-Ansaar said Sunday that it was given the 40-minute video by a Pakistani security official in Islamabad about a month ago. It includes separate sections that seem to have been filmed at different times.
According to the news agency, the official said some sections of the film were shot in March in the southern Afghan town of Spinboldak, near the Pakistani border. But it said his claim was impossible to verify.

AL-JAZEERA SAYS TAPE IS OLD
U.S. officials familiar with the tape also said they have not been able to definitively date the tape, and the chief editor of the Qatar-based Arab television station Al-Jazeera, which has aired videos showing bin Laden in the past, said Monday that people at the station had seen the same tape four months ago and believed it was recorded in October.
“This is the same tape that we had four months ago, which we didn’t show because we didn’t think it was newsworthy,” said the editor, Ibrahim Helal. “There was nothing new in it and seemed to be a PR stunt. We think it was recorded sometime in October.”
According to The Sunday Times newspaper, which obtained the video from Al-Ansaar, the section filmed most recently showed bin Laden sitting beneath a tree in a camouflage jacket, praising Allah and talking about holy wars.
In another section, The Sunday Times said bin Laden warned that any country siding with Israel would be a target. “The war is between us and the Jews,” the paper quoted him as saying on the tape. “Any country that steps into the same trench as the Jews has only herself to blame.”
On Monday, Britain’s Foreign Office said that security officials would examine the tape. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official said the foreign office is aware of a general threat against Western interests and that the video did not increase that threat.

NBC’s Norah O’Donnell and Jim Popkin; MSNBC.com’s Mike Brunker, Michael E. Ross and Daniel Strieff; and The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/754110.asp