01 October 2001Ashcroft Sees Likelihood of More Terrorist Activity in U.S.
(Urges quick action on anti-terrorism package in Congress) (430) By Stuart Gorin Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- Attorney General John Ashcroft, urging Congress to quickly pass the Bush administration's requested anti-terrorism package, said September 30 there is "the likelihood of additional terrorist activity" in the United States. Appearing on the CBS News interview program "Face the Nation" 19 days after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Ashcroft said "It's our job to do whatever we can to interrupt it and to disrupt it. That's why the legislative package is so important to us." Calling the terrorist network "very substantial," the attorney general said its roots are in Afghanistan but it is an international conspiracy that is well financed. "If you look carefully at the face of terrorism in the last several years, there have been cross reinforcing links between the al-Qaeda organization and a number of other terrorist groups," Ashcroft said, "and for us to be exclusively focused would probably be unrealistic." He said he had no reason to believe that "the entirety of those involved" perished in the September 11 attacks. "That's why we've arrested individuals, detained individuals, and frankly, we'll do everything we can to make sure that we don't have a recurrence," he added. More than 500 people have been arrested and detained, and "We would hope that we would be able to disrupt, interrupt, delay, otherwise impair any additional terrorist activity," Ashcroft said. Obviously there are risks," the attorney general said, "but we want those risks to be depressed," the attorney general said. "As we increase the tools we have, the risk goes down." Asked if the anti-terrorism measures before Congress would infringe on civil liberties, he said that asking for suspected terrorists who were illegally in the country and in violation of immigration law to be detained on a continuing basis while the courts were adjudicating their status, "isn't a threat to the civil rights of individuals." Asked further if he believed terrorist cells are still operating inside the United States, Ashcroft said, "we need to do everything we can," including airtight surveillance on spies, terrorists, foreign agents." There are provisions in the proposed legislation, he said, "that would allow us to use information gathered by foreign governments, and I think that information gathered in accordance with the law of foreign governments should be available to us." (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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