Homeland Security

DATE=11/29/02

TYPE=BACKGROND REPORT

TITLE=TERRORISM / MISSILE THREAT

NUMBER=5-52666

BYLINE=NICK SIMEONE

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Two weeks before a bomb destroyed a hotel resort in Mombasa, Kenya (Thursday), the Australian government said it had information the city could be targeted by terrorists and warned its citizens not to travel there. V-O-A Correspondent Nick Simeone reports the United States had also been alerted months ago about the possibility that terrorists could try to target commercial airliners with surface to air missiles, as they apparently did just before the Mombasa attack.

TEXT: Earlier this year, remnants of a spent antiaircraft missile were found close to an airstrip in Saudi Arabia, one used by U-S military aircraft patrolling Southern Iraq's no fly zone. The F-B-I took it as a warning that al-Qaida terrorists could be trying to bring down an airplane with surface to air missiles left over from the Afghan war against Soviet occupation.

Magnus Ranstorp is a terrorism expert at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

/// RANSTORP ACT ///

There is a lot of sam-seven (surface to air) missiles, other stinger missiles out there that could potentially be directed against a target.

/// END ACT ///

Spent canisters from the same kind of shoulder-fired missiles were found in Kenya Thursday after the pilot of a crowded Israeli airliner, taking off from Mombasa, reported being targeted from the ground.

A U-S official tells V-O-A that al-Qaida is at the top of the list of suspects.

Again, Magnus Ranstorp.

/// SECOND RANSTORP ACT ///

There is certainly a network there and it represents one of the blind spots in the war against terrorism.

/// END ACT ///

In Israel, Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells N-B-C's "Today Show" if al-Qaida or any other terror group was behind Thursday's attempted rocket attack, it would mark the most dangerous escalation in the terrorist threat since last year's attacks in the United States.

/// NETANYAHU ACT ///

If they tried to do that to Israeli planes today, they will do it to American planes tomorrow. I think this is a threshold change where international terror now is trying to bring down a civilian aircraft and this is something that we've got to stop.

/// END ACT ///

Here in the United States, a possible threat to commercial aircraft was reported a day earlier. Air defense officials say fighter jets scrambled Wednesday to investigate reports from three commercial airline pilots who reported seeing contrails, streams of crystallized water vapor possibly from an object fired from the ground, near their aircraft.

Lieutenant Commander Curtis Jenkins is a spokesman for NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

/// JENKINS ACT ///

Someone saw contrails in the vicinity of the Turks and Caicos (Islands) as if it were heading northwest toward America. And then over America, somebody saw contrails that seemed to continue northwesterly and then again up in the Indiana area, somebody again saw contrails. When I say somebody, what I'm referring to are commercial airline pilots. We did not have anything on our radar that would have suggested what the source of these contrails might have been.

/// END ACT ///

Thursday's terrorist bombing in Mombasa -- and the apparent attempt to shoot down a commercial airliner there -- come just a month after the deadly blast at a nightclub on the Indonesian resort island of Bali which killed nearly 200 people. Since then, the United States and other governments have warned terrorists could now be shifting their focus away from official targets like government buildings and landmarks where security has been increased -- to less heavily guarded or softer targets, like schools, nightclubs and, as has been the case twice now, resorts. (SIGNED)

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