Posted on 05/18/2002 10:31:35 AM PDT by GeneD
WASHINGTON, May 18 — American intelligence agencies have intercepted a vague yet troubling series of communications among Al Qaeda operatives over the last few months indicating that the terrorist organization is trying to carry out an operation as big as or bigger than the Sept. 11 attacks, according to intelligence and law enforcement officials.
But just as last summer's threats left counterterrorism analysts guessing about Al Qaeda's intentions, and believing that the attack might be carried out overseas, the new interceptions are so general that they have left President Bush and his counterterrorism team in the dark about the time, place or method of what some officials refer to as a second-wave attack. As a result, the government is essentially limited to taking broad defensive measures.
"It's again not specific — not specific as to time, not specific as to place," one senior administration official said.
The officials compared the intercepted messages, which they described as cryptic and ambiguous, to the pattern of those picked up last spring and early summer, when Qaeda operatives were also overheard talking about a big operation. Those signals were among the evidence that intelligence agencies presented to President Bush in August about the possibility of an imminent attack against the United States.
The senior official said Friday that the amount of intelligence relating to another possible attack, in Europe, the Arabian Peninsula or the United States, had increased in the last month. Some of it comes from interviews with fighters captured in Afghanistan.
But despite the disruption of Al Qaeda's operations around the world since Sept. 11, and despite major spending increases and shifts of resources to counterterrorism operations, American officials say they have not been able to fully piece together the clues about Al Qaeda's plans.
"There's just a lot of chatter in the system again," the official said. "We are actively pursuing it and trying to see what's going on here."
The government's frustration underscores the problem in fighting an unconventional foe like Al Qaeda.
Interviews with law enforcement and intelligence officials suggest that in the eight months since Sept. 11 the government has made only limited progress in its ability to predict Al Qaeda's next move, and that many proposed improvements in counterterrorism operations have yet to be put into effect.
This is despite considerable advantages that the United States lacked a year ago. The war in Afghanistan has provided a wealth of new information about Al Qaeda's structure and organization, for example.
In addition, the United States is also interrogating captured Qaeda fighters about the organization's plans. Officials say that debriefings of detainees have in some instances provided general warnings of another major attack that dovetail with the threats picked up in the intercepted communication traffic.
Facing intense criticism in recent days over disclosures that a series of possible clues about Al Qaeda's plans fell through the cracks in the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, officials say that some significant changes have been made in the way threat information is studied and circulated within the upper reaches of the Bush administration.
For the first time, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. now compare notes on all terrorist threat information that comes in each day, filtering the intelligence through what they call an analytical "matrix" to determine which threats are the most credible and deserve the most attention. Their daily threat report is distributed to senior policy makers, including the White House director of homeland security, Tom Ridge. It provides a structure for debates among senior officials about whether to issue public threat warnings.
President Bush also now receives daily briefings from both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, are frequently present during those White House sessions. That way, each agency is able to hear the other's latest advice to the president. Before Sept. 11, he received a daily briefing only from the C.I.A.
Although officials say some potential attacks have been foiled, that has been largely credited to the arrest of terrorist operatives overseas by foreign governments rather than to intelligence gleaned from intercepted communications.
United States intelligence officials said that they began to intercept communications among Qaeda operatives discussing a second major attack in October, and that they have detected recurring talk among them about another attack ever since. Some of the intercepted communications have included frightening references to attacks that the Qaeda operatives say would cause vast numbers of American casualties.
The intercepted communications don't point to any detailed plans for an attack, and even the messages mentioning mass casualties don't refer specifically to the use of weapons of mass destruction like chemical, biological or nuclear devices.
Still, American officials say they believe the intercepts represent some of the most credible intelligence they have received since Sept. 11 about Al Qaeda's intentions. They have provided a troubling undercurrent for the Bush administration as it tries to sort through the hundreds of other terrorist threat warnings it has received over the past few months.
The pattern of intercepted communications that began last October has helped prompt at least five public threat alerts issued by the F.B.I. since last fall.
By contrast, federal law enforcement and intelligence officials say they have been skeptical of many of the far more specific threats they have received from individual informants over the past few months. One of the problems now facing American counterterrorism experts is that they say communications intercepts, while vaguely worded, are often highly credible threat warnings, while the very detailed and specific threats passed on by individual informants are often far less reliable.
Individual informants who approach American investigators in the United States or overseas often know what kind of story will get the biggest reaction. They also often come forward because of hidden motives, perhaps hoping for money or entrance into the United States. The C.I.A. routinely gives its informants polygraph tests in an effort to validate their stories.
But officials say that in some cases they have been forced to take tales told by informants more seriously than they otherwise might, at least in part because officials suspect from the intercepted communications that Al Qaeda is planning something big.
In recent months, officials have issued threat alerts regarding nuclear plants, financial institutions and even specific structures like the Seattle Space Needle and the Golden Gate Bridge, even as some counterterrorism experts privately regarded those threats as not based on solid intelligence.
Some officials say the government's new color-coded threat alert system is less useful than the system it replaced, because it is subject to political influences from appointees who are fearful of being criticized if they fail to pass on every possible threat, no matter how remote.
Yet even as the less credible threats have been widely publicized, the more worrisome and credible undercurrent of intercepted communications has not been made public.
In hindsight, analysts now view the pattern of intercepted communications they saw last May, June and July as a sign of the impending attacks. Those intercepts, coming after embassy bombings in Africa and the suicidal bombing of a Navy ship in an Arabian port, were sometimes alarming.
Their references to mass attacks against American interests prompted a series of public alerts against possible terrorist attacks last summer, including one concerning a possible strike over the Fourth of July holiday. Officials said that they never had any evidence that an attack would occur inside the United States, and instead focused most of their attention on possible strikes against American facilities in the Middle East, Europe or Asia.
After the summer holiday passed quietly without any attacks, American analysts were relieved, but still believed that an attack might be coming. However, they lacked any further details of where or when the strike might come, and some officials began to think that the immediate danger might have passed. Now that analysts are seeing a similar pattern of communications intercepts, they say they are determined to avoid a repeat of that mistake.
Damned smart, indeed. Not bad for a bunch of "old white guys", huh?
PS NO racial slur intended. Just couldn't resist the temptation to slam what I have heard from the liberal PC socialist educational system these days. Fact is, what's right is right, no matter the source. In this case, the source was our European founders. Praise God for their wisdom!
What the Jihadist barbarians don't realize (well, perhaps the real smart ones do) is that the United States is so well armed at the civilian level that this country can become, on very short notice, as armed as the Northwest Frontier in Pakistan.
Actually, much more so. Th battle here would become the meat grinder that we were (constantly, by the lib press) told Afghanistan would be. In reality, these pukes would be sh*tting their pants on the run.
The Founders were pretty clever, non?
And his little dog Hillary, too.
There's no doubt in my mind.
I think he'd love to see America fall, and claim himself world king.
Sorry, gotta run errands now! -- hearing in the distance: "Honey, LET'S GO!")
Please refer to the following posts: 183, 185 for insight.
PS: I don't disagree that a dirty nuke or other WMD deployment would be very ugly. Just saying that the response of an armed populace would be uglier.
Right you are Wash_man.
From section 802
...(5) the term `domestic terrorism' means activities that--
`(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
`(B) appear to be intended--
`(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
`(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
`(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
If somebody meets those qualification then they are a terrorist.
The NY Times, unamed sources -- is anybody else here trouble by that?
What's incredible is that nobody read the thing, yet all but Ron Paul voted for it.
But, I feel safer now. Don't you?
Those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither. - Benjamin Franklin
Necessity is the plea for every infringment of human liberty. It is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves. - William Penn
"...this uniformly accepted rule rests upon the fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." [Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. Ct. of Ap., 1981)]Right~~Law and Order. Give me a break. Law and Order is for the benefit of govenment's power, not our protection.
I want airline pilots to profile. I want my local grocer to profile. I want my neighbors to profile...etc.
What about this makes you think I want government to profile?
You think you know it all, don't you? Admit it... you think you know better than I what I mean. Even though I typed nothing about the government... even though your myopic view actually invented/created the non-existent "government" in my post, and even though your ignorance to reading my post a second time to see that I did not mention government... youstill assert something demonstrably false?! LOL!!!
Read my posts again! I vehemently reject government provided "security".
Why do you insist otherwise? I'm very curious about that. Why would you assert something so obviously false?
You have shown to be quite foolish. Perhaps you've had a busy day and haven't taken the time to read my posts? Please, go back and read them. They say nothing about government provided "security". It was you who brought that up.
You're what's wrong with FR. You're always "right"...even in a case such as this where you've invented a make believe world for yourself in which you invenst things for people to say that make you right.
I never said I wanted government involved. Got it? You invented that!
Now run along and take your meds.
Why do you think it is A OR B instead of A AND B?
Most of the war-whooping morons that are in the majority on this board appear to believe Big Brother is Das-hole and the Demo-Craps. The Repbublicans on the other hand are unswervingly virtuous, and patriotic. They would never lie to us, or take our freedoms. No sir, that was Hillary and Carville. The Republic is safe now under the watchful eye of Attorney General Ashcroft and der Office of Homeland Security.
Rest well citizen Winston.
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