Posted on 05/24/2004 5:11:24 AM PDT by billorites
The chatter was persistent--and alarming. In the weeks after the deadly March bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid by al Qaeda operatives, the supersecret U.S. surveillance network, Echelon, intercepted a number of messages from suspected terrorists suggesting planning for a massive, multipronged assault on the United States. When? Between this summer's political conventions and October, one month before the presidential election. The intelligence appeared to confirm information obtained from some seized al Qaeda computers and from several human sources, government officials say. Officials at the CIA and the National Security Agency, which runs the Echelon program, believe the information is credible but worry that the human sources were on the periphery of the now widely dispersed al Qaeda network. Nevertheless, the information pointed to two, perhaps three, targets, the sources say: New York, Washington, and Las Vegas. The objective of the suspected attack, the officials continued, would be not only to cause mass casualties and devastation of U.S. infrastructure but to roil the presidential race. The Madrid bombings, which killed 191 people and wounded 1,800, also toppled the Spanish government and triggered the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. "Since Spain," says a Bush administration official, "al Qaeda has had the feeling of 'We can do this. We can affect an election.' "
Washington is scrambling to react. Last month, U.S. News has learned, the CIA began a massive effort to pull operatives from around the world and redeploy them to Afghanistan and Pakistan, where al Qaeda's base of operations is still believed to be. "We think that's where the best effort can be made," says a U.S. counterterrorism official." The CIA declined to comment, but intelligence sources say the agency is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to recruit more Arabic and Pashto speakers; agency officials hope they will be able to corroborate signals traffic and intelligence from human sources with information from the al Qaeda computers and databases. "They want hard data," says an intelligence source familiar with the CIA's recruiting efforts, "and that's tough as hell to get."
U.S. special operations forces are also being deployed in greater numbers to the region, but just to Afghanistan. The CIA has long been able to operate in Pakistan's lawless tribal lands near the Afghan border, but U.S. troops are not supposed to be used as spies. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the target of two recent assassination attempts because of his support of the U.S. war on terrorism, has barred American troops from stepping on Pakistani soil, even though he has only cursory authority over the sprawling mountainous tribal lands where Osama bin Laden is thought to be hiding. "It's its own goddamn country, and we can't send our people in there!" says a senior military official, speaking about the tribal areas. "But where's the next best place we can do business? Afghanistan."
"Hammer and anvil. " The heightened efforts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border began last winter. In operations Mountain Resolve and Mountain Storm, conventional and special operations forces conducted sweep operations from spartan "fire" bases near remote villages along the border in order to develop better intelligence networks, in hopes of picking up leads on bin Laden's movements. But the heralded "hammer and anvil" strategy--with Pakistan pushing terrorists out of safe havens in the tribal lands and U.S. forces grabbing them in Afghanistan--has achieved only modest success because Musharraf hasn't followed through on pledges to carry out sustained military operations in the borderlands.
For CIA operatives and special operations troops, the hunt for bin Laden has now all but been supplanted by the urgent assignment to try to thwart a new terrorist attack in the United States. Navy SEAL units are shuttling through the Middle East and Central Asia on three-month rotations, administration sources tell U.S. News, instead of the usual six months, in order to make more commandos available to take part in the mission.
It is, in some respects, a catch-as-catch-can operation. "They're not even close" to having enough CIA personnel in Afghanistan to get the job done, a government official says, and agency recruiters are concerned that they are hiring new assets in the region so quickly that background checks may fail to detect problems or even potential double agents, who might deliberately send the agency astray with false information.
Given the nature of the suspected threat, however, officials say, they're just going to have to live with such uncertainties. Analysts say the intelligence chatter about an attack on the United States has shown up in open Internet forums and is similar to message traffic that preceded the Madrid bombings. "It's not just the official [terrorist] websites but also the chat rooms and Web forums," says Gabriel Weimann, a scholar in residence at the U.S. Institute for Peace. "The picture is not looking very good." Messages posted before the attacks in Madrid, Weimann says, described the Spanish government as "the first domino." Last week, the FBI sent out an advisory to law enforcement to be on the lookout for suicide bombers. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge also issued guidelines to Amtrak and other passenger train services to beef up security, including using bomb-sniffing dogs and removing trash cans from key locations. In a stunning move, the organizers of the Democratic convention, to be held in July in Boston, said they would shut down the area's busiest highwayduring the morning and evening rush hours for the entire four days of the event. It is still unclear whether the train stations at FleetCenter in Boston and under Madison Square Garden in New York City, where the Republican convention will be held, will be allowed to remain open.
The convention sites aren't the only possible terrorist targets. The summit of leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations is scheduled to be held in Sea Island, Ga., in June, and the Summer Olympic Games begin in Greece in August. "That's a group of lucrative, attractive targets," says a senior FBI official. "We have what's generic--at best--intelligence, and we're attempting to react to it without knowing quite what it might be."
Here's hoping they arrested the humans behind those seized computers. Sure, go ahead and bomb Vegas and tick off those guys with crooked noses.
Musharraf might not be dodging hit men if he'd put more effort into finding OBL or let us in.
I dont really want to contemplate it, but wonder what effect another major attack would have on our election.
Would it make kerry a shoe in, doubtful.
hoping we never have to know.
The Socialists will be swept into office.
Don't misunderestimate the foolishness of the American electorate.
Prime targets are the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times ...heck - it was only a dream.
My personal opinion is that there will be a terror attack from the far-left, disguised as Al Qaeda. They will attack somewhere NOT in New York, during the Republican convention.
If we foil the terrorists he gets the credit.
If he doesn't then voters will not want liberals in charge.
BUMP
I'd say they're safe--Kerry's the last person AQ would want to harm.
But with the steady drumbeat of negative news over the past several weeks, I'm not so sure anymore:-(
The looney left is winning the PR war.
Remember the Religion of Peace?
Is that still a popular phrase in the White House?
Is that still a popular phrase in the White House?
I sent an email to W a few weeks ago saying that the next time I hear him use that phrase, that I was going to vomit.
I agree. The news is becoming more and more depressing. I am beginning to lose my positive outlook on the whole situation.
I see no positive almost anywhere anymore. And as I listen to my liberal friends, I truly lose faith in the intelligence of the American people.
It's not the possibility of a major terrorist attack that worries me. With all the al-Qaeda cells in this country it would be extremely easy for them to carry out a "low-tech" attack, i.e., going into several shopping malls at the same time and start shooting and bombing.
Can you imagine the huge damage that would do to our economy?
If they think Kerry can win, I don't think they'll do anything. If it looks like 43 will wipe the floor with Jean, then I'd stock up on duct tape.
Depends on the timing.
America will rally behind GWB very strongly immediately following an attack, but support will erode as time goes on without arrests/retaliations.
So if they hit in August/September, it COULD hurt GWB, which we all assume they want to do.
Later than that, and Kerry's even MORE toast.
Politically, it might backfire for them, but they can't know that for certain.
Ping.
Couple months ago AQ asserted that a big one was '90% ready' for implementation. It had a ring of truth for me.
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