Posted on 12/02/2005 3:01:42 PM PST by Jean S
WASHINGTON - U.S. counterterrorism agencies have not detected a significant al- Qaida operational capability in the United States since the 2003 arrest of a truck driver who was in the early stages of plotting to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge. Nevertheless, al-Qaida's capabilities aren't clear and the group remains dangerous, the new deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Kevin Brock, said in an Associated Press interview.
The uncertainty reflects the tension facing national security officials even though the country has gone four years without a domestic attack from al-Qaida.
Brock was the FBI's special agent in charge of the Cincinnati office that investigated Iyman Faris, now serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding and abetting terrorism and conspiracy. Faris, a Pakistani who became a U.S. citizen in 1999, was exploring whether he could ruin the Brooklyn Bridge by cutting the suspension cables.
Brock said the case demonstrated al-Qaida's weakened state following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Faris didn't strike Brock as someone who could carry out a sophisticated plot though he was ordered by a top al-Qaida leader now in custody, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to handle complicated operations.
"Since the Iyman Faris case and other investigations, the FBI and other agencies are just not detecting an operational capability by the al-Qaida organization in the United States of imminent significance," Brock said.
Yet he and other senior officials say now is not the time to relax.
"We have to assume that they remain a very viable and very dangerous threat," Brock said. "You almost can't define al-Qaida just as an entity that you can put on an organizational chart. It has now expanded to an ideology that has gotten quite dangerous."
Brock presides over one of three daily teleconference calls on the latest terror threats in the U.S. and abroad. Sitting in the operations center's conference room, he and other officials from the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and elsewhere draw from more than two dozen U.S. networks and receive information on computer monitors that, with the push of a button, emerge from within a conference table.
Elsewhere, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in a speech Thursday that there is no alternative to constant pressure in the anti-terror effort. "We are continuing, every day, to evaluate and employ existing laws and tools that can help us in this fight," Gonzales told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York as he pressed for renewal of the Patriot Act.
Forty-five days after Sept. 11, Congress overwhelmingly passed the anti-terror legislation, but its reauthorization has been delayed this year by Republicans and Democrats who want to ensure there are adequate checks on governmental investigative powers.
In 2002, then-CIA Director George Tenet publicly touted CIA-FBI successes in bringing "terrorists to justice" by grabbing them off the streets and delivering them to third countries. Called rendition, the practice is now criticized by U.S. allies, human rights groups and some policymakers.
California Rep. Jane Harman, the House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, said the domestic terror threat has changed. She worries about the copycats with a "faint connection to al-Qaida" but potentially as dangerous as the organization itself.
House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said there have been hints that al-Qaida operatives continue to work toward attacking the United States, beyond the group's public pronouncements.
"I don't believe that ... we have gotten so good at this that we are perfectly safe. I still worry about attacks on the homeland and U.S. interests overseas and believe we have significantly more work to do," he said.
Hoekstra said the focal point has moved from the United States to Iraq because the various terrorist organizations want to beat the United States there, akin to how jihadists ran the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Brock said he doesn't believe the invasion and war in Iraq can be blamed for the threat reports that come into his center each day. "That would be too simplistic," he said. "There is too much of a diverse nature to these threats."
Had the U.S. not invaded Iraq, Brock said, terrorists would still carry out attacks. "But now they are mostly carried out in Iraq. That is where most of the people willing to commit suicide are going."
Officials have investigated whether the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has connections within United States. In communications intercepted by the U.S., Osama bin Laden has encouraged al-Zarqawi to look beyond Iraq.
Brock said distant links between al-Zarqawi and individuals in the U.S. do emerge and are investigated. For example, one extremist may phone another, whose number is found on a slip of paper in a third extremist's pocket.
"But there is nothing that has surfaced in the recent past that tells us that there is some imminent threat," Brock said.
He said the most worrisome attack would be one causing mass casualties _ "God forbid," a weapon of mass destruction. "We have to look at this from a hierarchy of horror, and work downward," he said.
That's good news. Now let's go after those Earth Liberation Front nut jobs and render them to some third world countries.
Sort of like the attitude of the left that says: "Crime is way down in NYC, so we don't need all these Cops around anymore ...."
/sarc
...Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said in a speech Thursday that there is no alternative to constant pressure in the anti-terror effort. "We are continuing, every day, to evaluate and employ existing laws and tools that can help us in this fight," Gonzales told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York as he pressed for renewal of the Patriot Act...
"Borders erased on schedule masters.
We'll use the Patriot Act to control the dissidents who don't want to pay for the Guatemalatization of the Continent." He told the puppetmasters who rule his transnationalist world.
"Good thing they won't get to vote on it." He chuckled.
Of course they also did not detect any "operational capability by the al-Qaida organization in the United States of imminent significance" in late 1990 and into September of '91 either.
Then there is the report of three Middle Eastern appearing, men with a SAM or RPG launcher near Tinker AFB on July 14th. They also had a video camera and were apparently tracking a B-1 at low altitude near Tinker (Tinker is the Depot for B-1s) They were near the lake just south of the base Michelle Malkin reports that the Air Force Issued a Battle Staff Directive (#41) on the incident.
Even if it is true [no serious ability], one ought to reckon that it is either not true at all, or may be true only temporarily, and not let one's guard down.
Al Qaeda is laying low and letting the Dems keep the country divided.
"Al Qaeda is laying low and letting the Dems keep the country divided."
I think you're right. Has Homeland Security checked the HQ of the DNC for info about terrorists here in the US? How about the NY Times offices? Kennedy's? Kerry's? Murtha's?
Until the feds get undercover agents into the mosques (popping up everywhere) this country is not safe...in fact it's the furthest thing from safe.
BTW- "rendition" helps...keep doimg it.
Doubt is a luxury we can’t afford anymore. So we must always be on guard.
Definitely NOT Bush's fault!!
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