-Caveat Lector-
November 17, 2002
Agencies Monitor Iraqis in the U.S. for Terror Threat
By DAVID JOHNSTON and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 — The Bush administration has begun to
monitor Iraqis in the United States in an effort to identify potential
domestic terrorist threats posed by sympathizers of the Baghdad
regime, senior government officials said.
The previously undisclosed intelligence program involves tracking
thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans with dual citizenship
who are attending American universities or working at private
corporations, and who might pose a risk in the event of a United
States-led war against Iraq, officials said.
Some of the targets of the operation are being electronically
monitored under the authority of national security warrants. Others
are being selected for recruitment as informants, the officials said.
In the event of an American invasion of Iraq, officials would intensify
the program's mission through arrests and detentions of Iraqis or
Iraq sympathizers if they are believed to be planning domestic
terrorist operations.
The government officials who confirmed the outlines of the program
did so in an apparent effort to rebut critics in Congress and
elsewhere who have complained in recent days that American
intelligence agencies are failing in their war against terror. Senior
Democratic senators have said the problems are demonstrated by
the government's inability to find Osama bin Laden and to identify
specific threats since the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Iraqi domestic intelligence program is an addition to the
government's continuing effort since the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon to identify citizens of Middle Eastern
countries who represent a potential threat. Those efforts have also
been stepped up as the country prepares for the possibility of war.
Next week, federal authorities plan to begin interviewing Arab-
Americans, asking them to report suspicious activity related to Iraq,
a senior government official said. The interviews will be voluntary,
but in the past, such efforts have been criticized by Arab-American
groups. The F.B.I. is planning to meet with Arab-American civic
leaders to explain the nonclassified aspects of the operation,
officials said.
Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the White House Office of
Homeland Security, declined to comment on the surveillance
program, which is classified.
The effort by intelligence agencies, particularly the F.B.I., to
strengthen and expand their counterterrorism programs comes at a
time of serious discussion in Congress and in the Bush
administration about whether to create a domestic intelligence
agency like MI-5, the British agency that collects information about
internal threats.
Senior Bush administration counterterrorism officials gathered on
Veteran's Day at a White House meeting directed by Condoleezza
Rice, the national security adviser, to discuss whether to strip the
F.B.I. of its domestic security responsibilities. The meeting was first
reported today by The Washington Post.
No one in the administration has formally proposed creating a
domestic intelligence agency. Several officials said dismantling the
F.B.I. remained an uncertain prospect, but they said a wide range of
ideas were likely to be considered with the creation of a Homeland
Security Department.
Another part of the new intelligence operation involves a focused
effort to assess whether the regime of Saddam Hussein has
engaged in any actions, through alliances with Middle Eastern
terrorist organizations or efforts to obtain weapons, that could
threaten American interests in this country or abroad. The operation
is also tracing the movement of money by the Iraqi government, and
organizations sympathetic with Iraq, around the world.
The officials said the monitoring operation had not detected any
specific threats in the United States or against American interests
overseas.
The operation draws on the experience of a smaller program that
was undertaken in the gulf war with Iraq in 1991, a conflict that
resulted in little immediate threat of terrorism in the United States.
During the war, the F.B.I. and the Immigration and Naturalization
Service conducted thousands of interviews with Iraqis and other
Arab-Americans in the United States and investigated hundreds of
Iraqis who had entered the United States on visitor's visas and had
not left when their entry permits expired.
A large number of government agencies are part of the new
operation, including the Pentagon, the F.B.I., the Central Intelligence
Agency, the immigration service, the State Department and the
National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on communications
around the world, officials said.
Officials said the operation would also step up monitoring of Iraq's
foreign intelligence service, which they believe operates under
diplomatic cover from Baghdad's mission at the United Nations.
"This is the largest and most aggressive program like this we've
ever had," said one senior government official, who spoke on
condition of anonymity. "We think we know who most of the bad
guys are, but we are going to be very proactive here and not take
any chances."
Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is departing as
chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview
this week that American intelligence agencies, in particular the
F.B.I., had failed to consider the full range of threats that might stem
from a war with Iraq.
Mr. Graham said that beyond threats from Al Qaeda, American
intelligence agencies had not adequately assessed threats posed by
other Middle Eastern terror groups that are likely to be inflamed by a
war with Iraq, among them Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
"I think we make a mistake when we assume that the threat is only
Al Qaeda," Mr. Graham said. "There are a lot of terror groups out
there, some of them with a large presence in the United States, who
shouldn't be dismissed because in the past they have not attacked
in the United States."
Intelligence analysts said that for years the authorities have tracked
the movements of Islamic militant groups in the United States. The
groups were subjected to scrutiny because they engaged in fund-
raising or criminal activity that brought them into contact with law
enforcement agencies, the officials said. In contrast, Qaeda
operatives like the 19 hijackers lived quietly and, except for a
handful of minor traffic violations, did not break the law.
But Mr. Graham said that F.B.I. officials, in closed sessions with the
committee, had been unable to provide basic information about
Islamic militant groups with a presence in the United States.
"The kinds of questions that I've asked are: how many operatives
are in the United States, where are they distributed, what is their
infrastructure — financially, logistically and with communications,"
Mr. Graham said. "It's the same inability to answer."
For 90 minutes on Friday, Mr. Graham met with Robert S. Mueller
III, the F.B.I. director, to discuss his concerns. Mr. Mueller presented
the senator with a briefing of current counterterrorism operations in
the United States, officials said.
"Mr. Mueller was more forthcoming than in past sessions, and that
seemed to satisfy the senator," said Paul Anderson, a spokesman
for Senator Graham.
However, Mr. Anderson said that Senator Graham believed the
F.B.I. "has a long way to go" in its domestic counterterrorism efforts,
"and very few days in which to get there," a reference to the
possibility that a military confrontation with Iraq could occur within
three months.
American officials contend that the Iraqi intelligence service learned
a lesson from its failure to engage in anti-American terrorist
activities during the first gulf war. Iraq's efforts were disrupted by the
C.I.A. and the F.B.I., and it was unable to mount any successful
terrorist attacks against American interests.
After the gulf war, Iraq botched an attempt to assassinate former
President George Bush on a visit to Kuwait in 1993, prompting
President Bill Clinton to order a cruise missile strike at the Iraqi
intelligence headquarters building in Baghdad. Since then,
according to the C.I.A., there is no evidence that Iraq has engaged
in terrorist activity against the United States.
The Bush administration has said it has evidence of contacts over
the years between Iraqi intelligence and Qaeda operatives, and
there have been reports that some Qaeda operatives moved into
Iraq after fleeing Afghanistan. But American intelligence officials say
there is no evidence that Iraq has become involved in Qaeda
terrorist operations, and the Bush administration has never found
hard evidence that Iraq played any role in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Instead, Iraqi intelligence devotes much of its efforts overseas to
tracking and harassing Iraqi dissidents, and seeking secret arms
and oil deals for Saddam Hussein's regime.
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