Agence France Presse August 27, 2002
US braces for new major terror strike
BY PATRICK ANIDJAR
One year after the tragedy of September 11, the United States braces for a possible new terror onslaught, convinced it is better armed to deal with the terrorists but also aware that it cannot thwart all their plans.
"There is no question in my mind. We will be attacked again," said former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) counterterrorism chief Dale Watson, who recently resigned his post. Members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network are still operating in the United States and preparing new attacks, the Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said in a BBC interview Monday.
At the end of June, Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet briefed the US Congress on how the nation's security chiefs plan to use a combination of espionage, infiltration and destruction to shield the nation with a strategic safety net.
But US authorities are maintaining a veil of secrecy over their successes in the battle against the al-Qaeda network and its leader, bin Laden, blamed by Washington for last year's deadly kamikaze strikes on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Both the CIA and the FBI were criticized for not predicting the attacks, but now say they are working together better, have hired more Arabic speakers and that information gleaned by the US military in Afghanistan contributes to preventing new attacks.
But "no one can be secure against this sort of thing. You cannot totally prevent it but you can make it more difficult for terrorists, surely," argued Marc Burgess of the Center for Defense Information think tank.
"Today, America is less vulnerable, the level of awareness is up, concrete things are done. To what extent are they effective? I'm not in a position to say," he added.
Information gleaned in Afghanistan has shown al-Qaeda has practised using chemical weapons, undetectable explosives and urban warfare.
Strategists at the Pentagon, quoted by the Time magazine, estimate that even if al-Qaeda's has been severely disrupted and its leaders forced to flee, its members will regroup and plan new attacks against the United States. The organization clearly has scouted a wide range of targets -- maps of US nuclear facilities were found in al-Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan.
The Americans also fear the explosion of a radioactive "dirty bomb", which can be made by wrapping radioactive material around conventional explosives.
Water reservoirs and food stocks are under close surveillance. Authorities have put tighter control on trucks that could be laden with bombs and considerably increased security at airports.
Congress also is considering President George W. Bush's proposal to create a Department of Homeland Security to coordinate the work of various federal agencies under one umbrella.
Bush has called the plan "the most significant transformation of the United States government in over half a century."
Lawmakers already have expanded the power of police to keep track of people's activities, and passed a 40 billion dollars budget for homeland defense.
The administration has also instituted a color-coded threat warning system.
But concretely, estimates John Pike, director of the site "www.globalsecurity.org", these measures are still largely insufficient.
"They haven't made any systematic effort to understand what needs to be done," he said. "There is still no widely distributed government pamphlet that instructs citizens how to defend yourself against a terrorist attack, what to do in case of a chemical or biological attack.
"Are you supposed to stay home or are you supposed to run away?"
© Copyright 2002 Agence France Presse
