Retaliation Feared If U.S. Strikes Afghanistan
By Susan Schmidt and Bob
Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 5, 2001; Page A01
U.S. intelligence officials have told members of Congress there is a high
probability that terrorists associated with Osama bin Laden will try to launch
another major attack on American targets here or abroad in the near future. Based on what officials described as credible new information, the FBI and
the CIA have assessed the chances of a second attempt to attack the United
States as very high, sources said yesterday. At a briefing Tuesday, in response to a senator's question about the gravity
of the threat, one intelligence official said there is a "100
percent" chance of an attack should the United States strike
Afghanistan, according to sources familiar with the briefing. One senior official said some of the new intelligence is "very real." But the
official cautioned that some of it may be braggadocio or even disinformation
designed to discourage the United States from retaliating for the Sept. 11
attacks on New York and Washington. The new information is worrisome enough that officials at the White House,
the Justice Department and the State Department have huddled in recent days to
figure out the best way to communicate their concern to the public, a source
with knowledge of those discussions said. The concern about another attack is based on intelligence from sources in
England, Germany, Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to a source familiar with
what congressional intelligence committees have been told. Egyptian, Somali and
Pakistani elements of bin Laden's network are thought to be involved. Members of the intelligence committees declined to comment on the briefings
they have received, which are classified. But their public comments, and remarks
by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft on Sunday, highlight the danger the country
continues to face. "We have to believe there will be another attempt by a terrorist group to hit
us again," Sen. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), ranking Republican on the Senate
intelligence committee, said yesterday. "You can just about bet on it. That's
just something you have to believe will happen." Shelby declined to discuss specific intelligence information on the plans of
bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network that were provided in a classified
briefing Tuesday by counterterrorism officials from the FBI, CIA and the Defense
Intelligence Agency. Ashcroft warned earlier this week that there is a "likelihood of additional
terrorist activity," and that the "risks go up" once the United States responds
with military action. "We think that there is a very serious threat of
additional problems now," Ashcroft said. "And frankly, as the United States
responds, that threat may escalate." The Justice Department sought to play down that warning slightly Monday,
after Ashcroft's words received more media attention than officials had
expected. "Ashcroft's and [Secretary of State Colin L.] Powell's people and the White
House are working on how to word their warnings," a source familiar with
multiagency discussions said. "The government doesn't want to panic people."
But, he added, "The government is definitely preparing for a counterstrike by
bin Laden." Officials at the White House declined to comment yesterday. Government officials are fearful of attacks at any of hundreds or thousands
of locations, including symbols of American power and culture, such as
government buildings in Washington and centers of entertainment. They are
concerned about truck bomb and car bomb explosions that could be detonated near
natural gas lines, power plants and other sites that one source decribed as
"exposed infrastructure." The FBI has taken a particular interest in crop-dusting airplanes for fear
they could be used in a chemical or biological weapons attack. Mohamed Atta, one
of the suspected leaders of the Sept. 11 attack, expressed a keen interest in
the planes. Zacarias Moussaoui, a French-Moroccan man in custody as a material
witness, reportedly had materials about crop dusting in his possession when he
was detained in August. The overriding goal, a senior official said, is to make the United States a
"hard target" for terrorists. But U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies do not have specific
information on the nature of future attacks. The Coast Guard is boarding and
searching ships in New York, Boston and other harbors, and security has been
stepped up around nuclear power plants, oil pipelines, refineries and other
potential targets. The FBI has found no links between any of the 19 alleged hijackers or their
possible accomplices and any of the 1,000 to 2,000 suspected terrorist
sympathizers in this country, including known Al Qaeda supporters, lawmakers
were told. The group that conducted the Sept. 11 attacks and anyone who might
have helped it operated as a closed unit and there may be other such cells as
yet undetected by law enforcement, some members of Congress were told. "The investigative case has to take a back seat to preventing the next
terrorist act," a senior law enforcement official said. "That comes right from
the top, from the president of the United States on down." In preparation, the FBI has a plan in place to go "full tilt" for 72 hours
whenever the president decides to make a move against bin Laden, al Qaeda or
Afghanistan's ruling Taliban government, the official said. At the
investigation's command center in FBI headquarters, a team of analysts and
agents has been working around the clock sifting through reports of potential
threats since Sept. 11. U.S. officials acknowledge it is difficult to understand the motivation
behind some of the threats they have learned about. In response to threats from bin Laden's network that were detected in June
and July, for example, officials made decisions to abandon some U.S. embassies
and to move Navy ships in foreign ports out to sea. Now, officials have
concluded, the threats may have been disinformation designed to occupy
officials' attention, or to allow bin Laden operatives to observe American
counterterror lockdown methods, a knowledgeable source said. Shelby said law enforcement agencies believe terrorists will do something
unexpected, and thus the agencies are trying to think "out of the box" in
anticipating what might be ahead. However, he noted, bin Laden has been known to
return to the same targets repeatedly, such as the World Trade Center, which
terrorists with possible ties to bin Laden's group bombed in 1993. In 1999, a terrorist cell linked to bin Laden was thwarted in what one
participant later testified was a plot to bomb Los Angeles International
Airport. A senior government official said yesterday that if al Qaeda follows its
normal pattern, "other attacks are in various stages of planning." The U.S.
embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which were bombed in 1998, were first
surveilled as targets in 1994, according to court testimony earlier this
year. The government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said bin
Laden's terrorist organization "likes to mix tactics and targets." Under that
theory, more airplane hijackings seem less likely, because security has been
increased. Ground-based operations, he said, seem more probable. Staff writers Dan Balz, Dan Eggen, Vernon Loeb, John Mintz and Walter
Pincus contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8418-2001Oct4.html