Officials Question FBI Terror Readiness
URL:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40996-2002Nov11.html
By Dana Priest and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 12, 2002; Page A01
With intelligence agencies predicting that Iraq and sympathetic Islamic extremists will attempt to launch terrorist attacks against the United States in the event of war, many government officials are growing concerned that the FBI is dangerously unprepared to detect or thwart strikes on U.S. soil.
Fourteen months after the terror attacks on New York and Washington, the FBI does not have a detailed understanding of domestic terrorist networks that could fund, prepare and launch revenge attacks, said administration and congressional officials and outside experts.
The FBI's assessment of the domestic threat includes a much more narrow cast of characters that focuses on a small number of Iraqi agents, including intelligence officers, and militants identified in ongoing investigations.
"They still don't know where the terrorists are, how many are here, what their intentions are, what kind of support network they have," said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has been regularly briefed on FBI plans and the bureau's knowledge of suspected U.S.-based terrorists. "They can't give me an answer because they don't have one. . . . They have so little to show for their work and we have so little time to take action now.
"No evidence I've seen shows they have a sense of urgency or a thoughtful plan or very much information to predicate a plan on," Graham added. "There will be hell to pay if we don't use the next 60 days [before a war with Iraq might begin] to do everything in our power to dismantle their capability."
Graham is not alone in his concerns. The FBI's ability to convert from a primarily case-oriented criminal justice agency into a domestic investigatory body is being questioned and debated with great urgency by the National Security Council, members of Congress and intelligence experts who have been called upon to help out.
FBI officials strongly dispute critics' assessment of their preparations. "We are doing things far beyond what has been done before," said one official familiar with the FBI's efforts. He declined to elaborate.
But law enforcement sources said agents in the 56 terrorism task forces around the country are making efforts to identify and monitor militant Iraqis supportive of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein within the United States, among them former members of Hussein's Republican Guard who settled here after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. In addition, FBI agents are reviving contacts with anti-Hussein dissidents and other Iraqi refugees who were first cultivated as intelligence sources during the previous conflict, sources said.
The CIA, which is chasing terror networks abroad, has intensified its focus on operations with potential links to Iraq.
"It's a matter of trying to assess the threat and where it might come from if we go to war," one senior FBI official said. "There is very real concern about a number of possibilities, both Iraq-connected and from other groups. . . . We're doing what you'd expect us to do: measuring the threat, talking to old contacts."
History suggests retaliatory strikes are likely. During the Persian Gulf War, the number of terror attacks tripled. Intelligence analysts believe a backlash this time would be much stronger.
An unclassified version of a recent National Intelligence Estimate, which includes the opinions of all U.S. intelligence agencies, predicted that an invasion of Iraq would prompt Hussein "to become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions," including enlisting the aid of extremists.
Hussein would likely set aside his differences with terrorist groups and "might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamic terrorists in conducting a weapons-of-mass-destruction attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him," the report predicted.
Daniel Benjamin, a member of the National Security Council staff during the Clinton administration, said most analysts agree that the risk of a terror attack organized by Hussein's moribund intelligence service is low. But if Hussein's hold on power weakens, enlisting the help of extremists would change the equation, he said.
In Oct. 17 testimony to Congress, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said that the bureau was "increasing our resources [committed] to those individuals who might be in our country that might find this as an occasion to commit some sort of attack were we to initiate some operation with regard to Iraq.
"There is a substantial risk out there that they could undertake" attacks, Mueller continued. "And by 'they,' I mean not just those associated with Iraq, but those associated with al Qaeda or [the militant Lebanese group] Hezbollah or somebody else." Mueller's testimony also included this sober view: "I would be uncomfortable in saying that you should relax and say, 'The FBI or the CIA is taking care of that issue.' "
Mueller has told Congress that the number of terrorist investigations the FBI is conducting has tripled since Sept. 11, 2001, and the number of requests to surveil suspected terrorists has quadrupled.
At the same time, however, the FBI's new Office of Intelligence, created after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, has yet to hire and train a full staff, congressional and administration officials said. Mueller has said publicly that the bureau is struggling to keep up with the number of terrorism cases it must address.
Knowledgeable officials said the FBI's problems go beyond money and staff needs.
Unlike the CIA, which has elaborate analysis of terrorist networks from Paraguay to Malaysia to Saudi Arabia, FBI officials "still aren't looking at this as an intelligence agency, but as cops," said one U.S. government official who has been briefed on FBI assessments and plans. "You get the sense they don't really have a clue" about domestic terrorists in the United States.
FBI supporters counter that the bureau has in recent months broken up what authorities call terrorist "sleeper cells" in Detroit; Lackawanna, N.Y.; Seattle; and Portland, Ore. Last week, the Justice Department announced the arrest of men who allegedly tried to acquire missiles to sell to al Qaeda and a separate group accused of trying to trade drugs and cash for a large quantity of weapons for a Colombian paramilitary group.
U.S. foreign policy and actions toward Middle Eastern countries have long provoked violent reactions from individuals, groups and nations. One example cited by authorities is the case of Mir Aimal Kasi the Pakistani national who has said that he killed two CIA employees outside the agency's Langley headquarters in 1993 in retaliation for U.S. policies in the Middle East. His scheduled execution on Thursday has prompted the State Department to issue a worldwide caution about possible retaliatory strikes.
During the Persian Gulf War, Hussein called on Muslims to launch a "holy war" against the United States. More than 100 suspected Iraqi intelligence operatives working out of Iraqi embassies were expelled from 30 nations. Terrorists mounted 160 attacks during the 42 days of Desert Storm, three times the typical number, but none on U.S. soil, according to the State Department. Eight people were killed.
Anticipating retaliation in 1991, the FBI set up 24-hour counterterrorism command centers, and security was tightened on airlines, in Washington public buildings and at selected U.S. embassies. The CIA's counterterrorism center went on full alert, and the agency determined that Iraq had transformed its worldwide intelligence network into a terrorist support enterprise.
CIA covert action disrupted several plots in their planning stages. Several other attacks linked to Iraq were foiled, including the botched bombing of a U.S. library in Manila and another attack that was thwarted when Western intelligence agencies spotted and arrested Iraqi operatives using passports with consecutive numbers.
Most of the attacks in 1991, however, were launched by other terrorist groups seeking international attention -- Greek leftist guerrillas, a Turkish revolutionary movement, Japanese communists -- not Islamic militants or pro-Palestinian Arab groups.
At the time, U.S. officials credited unprecedented international cooperation from countries such as Syria and Libya for maintaining control of many terrorist groups. Eventually the threat fizzled.
The main difference this time around, said terrorism experts, is that international terrorism now includes determined militant Islamic groups such as al Qaeda that are not under state control. On the contrary, as the U.S. war on terrorism has captured or killed al Qaeda's leadership, it has spawned small bands of entrepreneurial terrorists encouraged by the idea of a jihad or "holy war" against the United States to act independently.
"Al Qaeda has always portrayed itself as the defender of Muslims or defenders of Islam, and [a U.S. war against Iraq] will be viewed in some quarters as an assault against Islam," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and head of the Rand Corp.'s Washington office. "If al Qaeda has any credibility, it has to be on the field. If they're going to be a player and have these pretensions, as their propaganda belabors ad nauseam, they've got to be active or they're a nonentity."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company |
