Terrorist Threat Ignored
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Thursday, Oct. 26, 2000
WASHINGTON (UPI) – A Pentagon terrorism expert has told Congress he warned of possible terrorist attacks on U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf before the bombing of the USS Cole but was ignored, senators said Wednesday.
The Defense Intelligence Agency official, whose name was not disclosed, resigned in protest the day after the Cole attack Oct. 12, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Roberts and staff from the congressional Select Committee on Intelligence interviewed the agent for six hours Tuesday, Roberts said at an Armed Services hearing on the Cole bombing Wednesday. The agent, Roberts said, also believes two or three major acts of terrorism could follow.
Reading from the agent's resignation letter, Roberts said: "He indicates his analysis could have played 'a critical role in DIA's ability to predict and warn of a potential terrorist attack against U.S. interests. ... [He] is very troubled by the many indicators contained in the analysis that suggest two or three other major acts of antiterrorism could potentially occur in the coming weeks or months."
The Armed Services Committee chairman, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., told reporters he would not immediately release the agent's name.
"It is my responsibility to judge what should and what shouldn't be made public," Warner said after the hearing.
It remains unclear whether the agent, who Warner indicated may be a civilian, had specific information relating to the Cole bombing that was ignored, or whether his information was more general.
Warner told reporters after the hearing the agent believed his assessment of the situation in the Middle East was not given the proper level of attention by his superiors and not incorporated into their final intelligence report.
USS Cole Wasn't Warned
As FBI and Yemeni authorities continue their search for the identity of the suicide bombers who attacked the Cole in the port of Aden, attention in Washington is turning to indications that the intelligence community knew the Navy destroyer was in peril before the bombing, but failed to issue an adequate warning.
The Washington Times reported Wednesday the super-secret National Security Agency issued a warning about a possible terrorist attack against U.S. or Israeli personnel or property in the Middle East several hours before the Cole was bombed. The newspaper asserted that a slow, inefficient bureaucracy prevented the information from getting to the Cole sooner.
But a senior Clinton administration Pentagon official told the committee that the NSA warning, which was made public Wednesday by the Times report, was not seen as specific enough to have changed the Cole's plans even if the warning had been available earlier.
"I have seen the messages in question, and I think it is highly questionable whether those messages constitute what the Washington Times story says they constitute, in terms of specificity," Walter Slocombe, undersecretary of defense for policy, said at the Armed Services hearing.
If He Had Known ...
The chief of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Tommy Franks, told the panel Wednesday that if he had known Oct. 12 that NSA believed a terrorist attack was being planned in the Middle East and that it had sufficiently specific information to support that belief, he may not have allowed the Cole to refuel in Aden, Yemen.
"We absolutely would have taken that information and reacted accordingly," Franks said.
"We would have been, as we always are, looking for those specific factors. And if that message contained those specific factors that indicated not only intent but that there was an attack imminent ... we would have taken immediate action."
Several senators criticized the Navy and the Pentagon for releasing flawed information about the timing of the attack immediately after it happened and not correcting the information until last week. Initially, the Navy said the bombing occurred as the ship was mooring to refuel. However, now it says ship logs show the Cole had been refueling for more than an hour when the bomb exploded.
"I think there is a legitimate issue that early reports discussed by the secretary of defense [and the chief of naval operations] publicly [was] ... significantly changed by subsequent reports," Sen. Warner told reporters.
"In my opinion, it does raise credibility issues."
Slocombe and Franks insisted that the faulty timeline had no material impact on the investigation or force-protection measures taken by the Central Command in the wake of the attack.
The Navy says initial reports came right after the bombing, in a time of chaos when communication links with the ship were spotty. The Navy said it did not correct the record for more than a week because it was not paying attention to the bombing timeline. Instead, it was working to treat the injured, recover the dead and comfort families of the crew.
Warner said crew members on the ship saw the incorrect public reports on the bombing and called home to say they were wrong. A former defense secretary called Warner on Tuesday with those concerns, he said during the hearing.
The hearing was closed to the public after 90 minutes to discuss classified information regarding the Cole.
About 5,000 U.S. military and other government personnel are in Aden, 400 of them ashore, supporting the investigation and maintenance of the Cole. The remaining crew of 216 is still with the crippled Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. It is expected to begin loading onto a Norwegian floating "flatbed" ship on Saturday.
The Cole's fuel tanks were about half-full when it pulled into Aden, according to Franks. It is Navy practice to top off fuel tanks when they are half full to allow a complete range of operations, Franks said.
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