Experts Won't Rule Out Another Attack Elsewhere in U.S.

By Walter Pincus and Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writers Saturday, September 15, 2001; Page A18

Intelligence, law enforcement and military officials say they are concerned that terrorists associated with the perpetrators of Tuesday's attacks in New York and Washington are plotting another attack elsewhere in the country, although they say they lack hard evidence.

Unlike the assaults on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, which involved suicidal hijackers piloting passenger jets, a new attack could be of an entirely different nature, involving a truck bomb or other explosive device, the officials said.

"It ain't over," said one senior intelligence official. "When something happens, threat information just starts gushing in. Given the nature of what's happened, it's hard to rule anything out."

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, said the CIA warned at a briefing Wednesday that it would not rule out further attacks and advised "caution for a considerable period of time."

With the U.S. government having named accused Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden as the driving force behind Tuesday's attacks, intelligence officials say they are concerned that other cells in bin Laden's al Qaeda network "may now go after different targets, such as oil refineries, which are simpler to attack," said one counterterrorist expert with ties to the Bush administration.

The success of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, the expert said, could either trigger their continued activity, or inspire U.S.-based groups to initiate one of their own long-planned operations, he said.

Speaking yesterday at a luncheon sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) raised the specter of a terrorist attack with even more deadly weapons. The terrorist threat "is much bigger than what we lived through this week," Gingrich said, predicting that "the next stage after this will be chemical, biological and nuclear weapons."

But Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who heads the Washington office of the RAND Corp., a think tank, said he does not believe Tuesday's attack will inevitably lead to an attack with weapons of mass destruction, given the difficulties of obtaining adequate quantities of bomb-grade fissile material and producing chemical or biological agents.

In fact, Hoffman said he found it "enormously illustrative" that those behind Tuesday's attacks chose hijacked airliners, not chemical or nuclear weapons, as their weapons.

Law enforcement and intelligence officials said what concerns them most is the presence in the United States of numerous known terrorist cells, some closely linked to bin Laden, others only tangentially. They possess the discipline and operational security necessary to pull off the kind of attack that occurred this week, officials said.

Bin Laden and other accused terrorists favor an organizational structure built around individual cells, tightly knit units that have little contact with each other even though they respond to the same leadership. This protects operational security by limiting the amount of information members of one cell have about the makeup and activities of another.

Tight bonds of loyalty can exist among even loosely associated cells, particularly when their members were among the Afghan mujahedin that helped drive the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in 1989.

"The acquaintances made in the camps in Afghanistan have become the basis for countless bits of assistance extended by one Islamist to another," said Paul R. Pillar, a former deputy head of the CIA's counterterrorism center who now serves as the CIA's national intelligence officer for South Asia.

In a book published earlier this year, "Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy," Pillar writes: "There is much practical cooperation among groups -- such as in procuring false documents, facilitating travel, and performing other support functions -- even if they do not conduct joint terrorist operations."

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001

Answers

Snip from above article:

Speaking yesterday at a luncheon sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) raised the specter of a terrorist attack with even more deadly weapons. The terrorist threat "is much bigger than what we lived through this week," Gingrich said, predicting that "the next stage after this will be chemical, biological and nuclear weapons." [end snip]

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001

I lean toward something like poisoning the water supply of a city or two. They may wait until we start breathing small sighs of relief.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001

Saturday, September 15 9:09 PM SGT

Bin Laden supporters want to use mass-destruction weapons: report

WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (AFP) -

Extremists supporting suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden have been trying to develop nuclear, radiological, chemical or biological weapons for attacks that may follow this week's assaults on the United States, the Washington Times reported Saturday.

The newspaper, quoting former US intelligence officials, said the unpredictable nature of previous attacks linked to bin Laden and the relative ease with which chemical and biological arms can be made raised the threat of such weapons being used.

"If you don't get hit by a North Korean ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) over the next five years, chances are you will suffer a horrible, premature death when Osama bin Laden poisons your hometown water supply," former CIA intelligence chief John Gannon said at a recent conference on terrorism, according to the newspaper.

Further intelligence reports indicate bin Laden's associates in Afghanistan are in the process of developing chemical weapons, US officials told the conservative daily.

Bin Laden is the prime suspect in the attacks Tuesday by four hijacked commercial aircraft on New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon just outside Washington and an aborted effort to hit a second Washington target that crashed in a field in western Pennsylvania. Thousands are missing and presumed killed in the worst-ever terrorist attack on US soil.

Former Central Intelligence Agency counter-terrorism specialist Vince Cannistraro told the Washington Times that the high-casualty count in attacks blamed on bin Laden show the Saudi-born dissident is a prime candidate to use weapons of mass destruction.

"Is he willing to do that? Obviously, he keeps escalating the terrorist opertions he pulls," Cannistraro said, pointing to the 1998 bombing of two US embassies in Africa and the blast in Yemen last October that crippled the warship USS Cole, both linked to bin Laden associates.

Cannistraro told the newspaper an Islamic front group in Chicago with ties to bin Laden's al-Qaeda ("The Base") network had invested in a company that produces chlorine for swimming pools, raising fers that the plant could have a sideline in producing chemical arms.

Further, a 1998 FBI report made public concluded the network, had tried since 1993 to buy enriched uranium "for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons."

Al-Qaeda is one of the amorphous multinational extremist groups that prompted widespread concern in the US State Department's annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report released in April.

"Most terrorists continued to rely on conventional tactics, such as bombing, shooting and kidnapping, but some terrorists -- such as Osama bin Laden and his associates -- continued to seek (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) capabilities," the report said.

-- Anonymous, September 15, 2001