Woodward has another piece in the Post this Week:
Terror Concerns of U.S. Extend to Asia
Arrests in Singapore and Malaysia Cited
By Eric Pianin and Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, January 18, 2002; Page A18
U.S. intelligence agencies are increasingly concerned that future attempts by terrorists to attack the United States may involve Asian or African al Qaeda members, a tactic intended to elude racial profiles developed by U.S. security personnel, senior Bush administration officials said.
With law enforcement focused on the threat from Middle Easterners, intelligence officials believe that "the next face of this is not going to be an Arab face, but possibly Indonesian, Filipino, a Malaysian face, or even African," one senior official said. "They understand the security profile we are operating on."
Recent arrests of terrorism suspects in Singapore and Malaysia, as well as Muslim guerrilla activity in the Philippines, have helped shift some of the government's attention toward Asia in its attempts to thwart future terrorist attacks -- which, the official said, are still very much a reality.
"They are trying to attack," the official said. "We have evidence of that."
Other officials cited the Dec. 22 attempted bombing of a jetliner by Richard Reid -- a British national whose father is black and whose mother is white -- as an example of a terrorist act by a non-Arab. Reid, described in an indictment on Wednesday as a terrorist trained by al Qaeda, allegedly tried to set off bombs hidden in the soles of his sneakers on a flight from Paris to Miami but was thwarted by a flight attendant and passengers.
According to one high-ranking official, information gleaned from interrogations of al Qaeda prisoners in Afghanistan and intelligence analysis suggest that planning was underway before the Sept. 11 attacks to strike a U.S. city using terrorists from non-Arab countries.
Two of the dead Sept. 11 hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, were videotaped at a meeting attended by al Qaeda operatives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2000. Zacarias Moussaoui, who was arrested in August and is awaiting trial in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on charges of conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks, visited Malaysia twice in 2000, authorities have said.
The latest concerns about potential threats from Asia follow the arrests in recent weeks of suspects in Singapore and Malaysia who authorities believe are tied to al Qaeda.
Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs said the suspects there were part of a regional terror network with cells in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Singapore authorities have said that a videotape recovered in Afghanistan indicated that the 13 suspects had planned to blow up Western embassies, U.S. naval vessels and a bus that transports American military service members. They said eight of the suspects had received training at al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
Paolo Pasicolan, a policy analyst in the Asian Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation, said that the group -- Jemaah Islamia -- wants to establish its own Islamic state that would include parts of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, and that it seemingly had confined its operations to Southeast Asia.
But because its members had received training and support from al Qaeda, he said that U.S. officials have reason to be concerned about a "quid pro quo" in which the group could shift its activities to the United States.
"If these men were planning to do something there, the next step of flying over to the United States wouldn't seem so farfetched," Pasicolan said.
An increasing number of FBI investigators have been diverted to Asian countries since Sept. 11 as plots were unmasked by local authorities, officials said. But several officials said they were not aware of any special security steps related to threats from Asia-based terrorists.
A spokeswoman for Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge declined to comment. "As a rule, we're not going to comment on any aspect of intelligence briefings that the governor has had," said Susan K. Neely, an aide.
A U.S. Customs Service official said that the agency has remained on the highest level of alert since the Sept. 11 attacks and that customs personnel are already paying close attention to travelers from Asian countries because of concerns about the activities of overseas organized crime groups.
Bill Berger, the police chief in North Miami Beach who heads the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said that he has received no warnings from Washington about potential terrorists from Southeast Asia. But he said it makes sense to broaden law enforcement's focus to include Asian Islamic extremists.
"I would imagine the parameters are now being expanded to include individuals who may be connected" to Asian terrorist organizations, Berger said. "If it prevents people from being killed or maimed, we've got to do what we've got to do."
Michael O'Hanlon, a terrorism expert with the Brookings Institution, cautioned that the latest concerns about Asian terrorist cells shouldn't distract the government from continuing to focus on Osama bin Laden's followers in Afghanistan and other Arab countries.
"There has been a bit of an obsession with Arab terrorists, but it's most justifiable," he said. "What's going on in Singapore, while important, does not compare with the efforts to dismantle the core elements of al Qaeda."
Bonnie Tang, a lawyer for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles, said she is concerned that the increased focus on Asian terrorists could lead to the unwarranted detention and interrogation of Asian Americans here.
"We don't believe terrorists should not be brought to justice, but we do believe that indiscriminate detention and interrogation based on country of origin are not the type of actions the government should take," Tang said. |
