Sec. Ridge is apparently enroute to the White House. FoxNews anticipates an increased state of terror alert (back up to orange level) after the meeting.
Supplies:
Posted on 05/20/2003 7:54:55 AM PDT by dead
An al-Qaeda cell believed to have fled Saudi Arabia for the United States or Europe shortly before the recent Riyadh bombings has sparked fears of an imminent attack on American soil.
A high volume of "chatter" - intelligence intercepts - has intensified fears of new attacks and is close to the level of communications intercepted before the strikes against the Riyadh compounds, a high-ranking Saudi official said.
The unnamed official said there had been at least three al-Qaeda cells with about 50 hard-core operatives in the kingdom before the bombings. He acknowledged that there was a much wider circle of sympathisers and US officials broadly agreed with his analysis.
"We don't believe there are tens of thousands of active al-Qaeda members here, but we believe the al-Qaeda presence is more than a single cell or two cells," a senior US official said yesterday.
Saudi sources described the threat of further attacks in the US or Saudi Arabia as "very serious".
"I think they were looking to do something more major than [the Riyadh bombings]," Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, said on Monday.
About 377 kilograms of explosives was discovered at a safe house raided near one of the compounds a week before the attacks. The Interior Ministry said at the time it was hunting 19 men in connection with the weapons cache.
"That would have taken out two blocks in the city if it had gone off accidentally. We're all wondering if it's the last [of the explosives] or is it the tip of the iceberg," Prince bin Sultan said.
The warning came as a large explosion rocked a cafe in the centre of Turkey's capital, Ankara, early yesterday, killing one person. The cause of the blast was not immediately clear. Charred metal and glass were strewn across the road outside the three-storey cafe, located in the city's main commercial district of Kizilay.
Several guerilla groups, including leftist militants and Kurdish rebels, have carried out attacks on civilian targets in Turkey during recent years.
But explosions also frequently occur due to faulty gas and electricity systems.
In Morocco, the Justice Minister, Mohamed Bouzoubaa, said on Monday that no link had been established between al-Qaeda and last week's suicide bombings in Casablanca that killed 41 people. In the United States, the last of the "Lackawanna Six" alleged terrorist cell pleaded guilty on Monday to providing "material support" to al-Qaeda, closing the case against the six US citizens - without any defendant standing trial or the Government having to prove that the men were part of a sleeper cell.
Instead, Mukhtar al-Bakri, 23, merely acknowledged in court that al-Qaeda instructors in Afghanistan had trained him to wage war against America and Israel, the Los Angeles Times said.
Facing a lengthy prison sentence if convicted at trial, al-Bakri, like his five comrades, chose to plead guilty to a single offence in the hope of serving less than 10 years. In return, he will co-operate in identifying al-Qaeda recruiters and other terrorist operatives.
Terror Team Headed To U.S.? May 20, 2003
" … we've got to understand there's an al Qaeda group still actively plotting to kill."
President Bush
(CBS) U.S. officials say they have intelligence that the recent attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco were intended as diversions to focus American attention on threats abroad while al Qaeda lays plans for an attack inside the U.S.
CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports law enforcement sources confirm that within the past two months, two Arab men have been quietly arrested in the United States on suspicion they had been sent to scout out targets for al Qaeda.
The probe into last week's deadly terror attacks in Riyadh has uncovered evidence that additional teams of terrorists may have fled Saudi Arabia before the attacks, perhaps headed to the United States or Europe, a newspaper reports.
Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington told reporters late Monday that "there is chatter, a high level of chatter regionally and in other international spots" about possible attacks in Saudi Arabia or America.
The FBI, in a bulletin dispatched to state and local law enforcement agencies around the country, warned that, "attacks against U.S. and Western targets overseas are likely; attacks in the United States cannot be ruled out."
For now, the alert level for the U.S. remains at yellow, but the Department of Homeland Security is reexamining the intelligence to determine whether it merits raising the threat level to orange, for high alert. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge was briefing Congress Tuesday morning.
Speaking on the CBS News Early Show, presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said there would be White House meetings on the terror alert status Tuesday morning.
"It's a day-to-day judgment that the experts make based on the latest analysis," he said. Fleischer also told NBC that "chatter" picked up by U.S. agencies suggested new attacks were possible.
CBS News State Department Reporter Charles Wolfson reports the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh and American consulates in Dharahan and Jedda will be closed on Wednesday and might not reopen until Sunday at the earliest. The embassy has put out a warden message to Americans saying it continues to receive "credible threats that some strikes may be imminent."
Since the end of the war in Iraq, there have been three attempts to attack Western interests in Muslim countries: the suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia and Morocco and a failed plot to fly a small plane into the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan.
All three countries were mentioned by al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden as potential targets in an audiotape released shortly before the Iraq war started.
Authorities around the world dealt with the aftermath of those attacks and other apparent terrorist activity:
* In Ankara, Turkey, a bombing at cafe at one of the capital's busiest intersections during morning rush hour Tuesday killed one woman and wounded another, officials said. No group immediately claimed responsibility. Radical leftist, Kurdish and Islamic groups are active in the country and have carried out bombings in the past.
* Israel reeled after five suicide bombings killed 12 Israelis over 48 hours. The Haaretz newspaper reported that Israeli officials are running out of options for responding to attacks, except for the politically tricky option of exiling Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
* In Morocco, authorities raised the number of bystanders killed in weekend bombings to 29 after determining that 12, not 13, suspected attackers died in the explosions. One suspect survived and was arrested.
A high-level Moroccan official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity, that investigators suspect the bombings were the work of homegrown Islamic groups working on instructions from al Qaeda.
President Bush said Monday the new wave of deadly attacks shows the world is still dangerous despite progress toward dismantling the al Qaeda terrorist network.
"I have always said this is going to be a long war, not only a long war, a new kind of war," Mr. Bush said at a news conference with Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, whom he feted partly to thank her for her support in the fight against terrorism.
The president said the attacks in Saudi Arabia showed that "we've got to be diligent, that we've got to understand there's an al Qaeda group still actively plotting to kill."
The FBI says the attacks also show that al Qaeda appears to be adapting its target list to so-called "soft targets" that are more lightly guarded than government or military installations. The FBI has warned before that terrorists could strike apartment buildings, hotels, restaurants and businesses.
The Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar al Sultan, told reporters that Saudi authorities had obtained information during recent months that al Qaeda had been wracked by internal divisions over whether to carry out strikes in Saudi Arabia.
"(But) they have mended their differences and decided to come out," said Prince Bandar, who is known for his close relations with the U.S. administration.
On Sunday, Interior Minister Prince Nayef said Saudi authorities have arrested four suspects apparently linked to al Qaeda over the car bombings. Asked whether the men in custody belonged to the terrorist group, Nayef said, "All indications point to that."
During a May 6 raid on a suspected terrorist hideout, Saudi police found written notes indicating America was considered "as an enemy and target," The Washington Post quoted a Saudi official as saying.
Three of the 19 suspects who escaped the May 6 raid have been linked to the May 12 bombings in the Saudi capital that killed 34 people, including eight Americans. Bodies of the three are among the remains of nine suspected bombers.
It was not clear if the notes referred to specific plans, and other officials contacted by the newspaper could not confirm the departure of the suspected terrorist cells. But the news follows fresh terror alerts in Saudi Arabia and the United States.
... Operation Bojinka......comes to mind.
Yes, that's why I posted another source and bumped it to breaking. I'm actually a little suprised it hasn't started already. But just a little; I'm aware they like to take their time and plan meticulously.
Stay safe!
They might, but I don't think so. For one thing, any suicide bombing would allow the FBI to ID the entire A-Q cell from which the bomber came. Each bombing would do far more damage to A-Q than it would to us.
The terrorists know that. And because they know they'll be caught, they have to make their attack as spectacular as possible.
Second, their motivation for attacks here is different from an attack in an Islamic country. The Riyadh bombings were intended to polarize the situation -- to pit salamikaze-style Islam vs. the Saudi Government, in hopes that the latter would respond badly and drive people over to A-Q.
That clearly wouldn't work here: it would just piss us off. Their hope would instead to be to get us to a) hate Islam in general to justify a Jihad (probably won't work); and b) to be frighten us into submission (also won't work).
I have that feeling as well. Not much attention was paid to that last al qaeda tape that was released almost six months ago where Morocco and Saudi Arabia were threatened. I read that they are just now re-analyzing that tape. Now we have this latest threat where they threaten to cut off the tail of the snake in the U.S. There seems to be no shortage of suicide bombers. For the Morrocco attack, they actually managed to scare up at least 10 homicide bombers willing to kill themselves to take out less than 50 innocents. These people are patient -- they plan and they wait as long as it takes until they can hit with a surprise attack.
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