FBI Delays Interviews in Fighting Terror Plot

More than a month ago, the FBI announced it would launch a wave of interviews across the country as part of an urgent effort to root out a suspected terrorist attack planned for the U.S. this summer.

Preparations for the attack were 90% complete, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said at the time. Preparations for the interviews are another story. It’s already July, and the FBI is still weeks away from launching the initiative, law enforcement officials confirm.

The interviews were included in a series of measures that the Justice Department and FBI announced at a May 26 news conference, calling attention to what Ashcroft said was “credible intelligence from multiple sources” that terrorists planned to hit the U.S. “hard” this summer.

An FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the delay shows that FBI officials are being meticulous in deciding whom they want to interview. A similar effort that focused on Muslim neighborhoods before the war in Iraq last year drew complaints of racial profiling.

But the delay also is bolstering a perception that Ashcroft’s warning -- which included poster-size photos of suspects, most of whom had been previously identified -- was a public relations exercise that sent mixed signals to citizens, including Arab Americans.

Ashcroft “has attempted to use scare tactics to promote his agenda, and I think it has been a real failure,” said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington advocacy group. “He has done this before. Each time he has done it, people keep asking afterward, ‘What was this all about?’ ”

The warning was not accompanied by any increase in the national terrorism threat level, which is administered by the Department of Homeland Security. Others complained that the assessment was based on intelligence that, while serious and real, had been known to federal agents for months.

And there was speculation from critics that the news conference was a calculated effort by the Bush administration to divert attention from its woes in Iraq. The episode fits a pattern, they say, and shows how Ashcroft’s aggressive style can paradoxically undermine the message he is trying to convey.

“The entire thrust of the counterterrorism effort in terms of law enforcement and intelligence-gathering has been a series of glamorous press announcements or political speeches,” said Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official in the Clinton administration and the current director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. “It is a miasma of confusion.”

A Justice Department spokesman, Mark Corallo, defended the alert, saying the attorney general believed the threat of a terrorist attack in the U.S. this summer was “as serious as we have ever seen.” Corallo said he was unaware the interviews had not yet begun, but that they represented just one part of a multifaceted anti-terrorism program the department was aggressively implementing.

“It is a serious threat that we are working around the clock to mitigate,” he said. “This is an ongoing operation. We are doing lots of things. The interviews will take place. There are other operations that are going on right now that the public does not know about.”

Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III unveiled the interview program in May as part of a series of measures they were taking to counter concerns that terrorists would try to exploit several high-profile events in the U.S. over the coming months, including the national political conventions. One of the concerns -- the annual meeting of the Group of 8 industrial countries -- took place last month on an island off Georgia.

“We ask for your cooperation as we launch a nationwide series of interviews to gather information and intelligence on these potential threats and on these individuals,” Mueller said.

He added that agents would be seeking “information about persons that may have moved into the community recently, persons who seem to be in a community without any roots, persons that could be either facilitators or those who are willing to undertake an attack.”

The announcement raised immediate concern among immigrant and civil-rights groups. The FBI interviewed thousands of Muslims after the Sept. 11 attacks, and thousands more Iraqi political refugees in the run-up to the war last year, stirring allegations that the government was engaged in racial profiling. Hundreds were jailed for lengthy periods in the post-Sept. 11 roundups, and many were deported for immigration violations.

The groups have been surprised that the government has not moved more forcefully.

“It is either a sign of disarray or secrecy,” said Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington office. “If you make this announcement, you ask for public support. Groups write to you. You would think you would hear action by now. They made it seem like it was such a serious warning.”

The ACLU wrote to Mueller late last month, decrying “the lack of official information from the government” about the program and saying that history showed the interviews to be “a fishing expedition based on little more than discriminatory presumption.” Murphy added: “We want to know what is going on, and we are trying to elicit a response.”

Some groups took the May warning as an opportunity to try to nurture closer ties with the government, but officials so far have not fully embraced the offer.

Within a week of the announcement, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a Los Angeles-based Arab American advocacy group, sought the FBI’s help in promoting a campaign to encourage mosques to take a more active role in working with law enforcement to fight terrorism.

The group is hoping to show investigators that meeting with community groups can be more productive than targeting individuals. The campaign, which organizers say was developed in direct response to the May announcement, has won the support of the FBI office in Los Angeles, but officials in Washington haven’t publically endorsed it.

“We are going on their cue,” said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim council. “I would hope there would be more of a sense of urgency.”

The FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the delay in interviewing showed that the bureau was being sensitive to such concerns and that the interviews would be “driven by intelligence,” rather than by singling out whole groups based on ethnicity or nationality.

Agents are reviewing older intelligence in light of new threat information the bureau has received in order to pinpoint people it may want to question, the official said. He said a special FBI task force was overseeing the effort, although the size of the unit was classified.

“You have got to build a foundation,” the official said. “There is something very specific we are looking for. You do not want to go out willy-nilly.”

He said the interview process would be up and running sometime in mid- to late July.