Terrorists Noted Flaws in Security, Report Says

A confidential intelligence report issued Thursday indicates that Osama bin Laden’s operatives displayed a keen interest in exploiting vulnerabilities in security at sensitive U.S. facilities, and FBI Director Robert Mueller said he believes that Al Qaeda-trained agents are still at large in the United States.

The intelligence report, reviewed by The Times, revealed that U.S. personnel in Afghanistan have discovered an Al Qaeda-linked computer hard drive containing a congressional study that exposed startling shortcomings in security at U.S. government facilities.

Also found by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan were news accounts about the congressional study that had been translated into Arabic, according to the intelligence report distributed Thursday to U.S. authorities through the FBI’s National Infrastructure Protection Center.

The intelligence report apparently refers to a study that the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, released publicly in May 2000 showing how easily infiltrators could get into sensitive U.S. facilities. Undercover GAO investigators, using bogus police credentials and fake IDs, managed to gain access to 19 of the nation’s most tightly secured buildings, including the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the Justice Department.

The GAO study sparked outrage in Congress, and federal officials say it prompted them to tighten security substantially at their buildings even before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Soon after the hijackings, authorities began warning security officials at nuclear reactors, military bases and a range of other federal facilities to use “due care” in identifying official visitors and not to assume that law enforcement credentials were legitimate.

But the new information from Afghanistan provides perhaps the clearest indication to date that terrorists have actively sought to prey on security vulnerabilities, officials said.

“What this means is that Al Qaeda types have taken the trouble to study specific information about physical security weaknesses, as reported by the GAO,” said a law enforcement official who asked not to be identified. “This is more evidence that we have to treat these people as sophisticated terrorists because they’re clearly doing their homework.”

The FBI declined to discuss the discovery of the study in Afghanistan, and officials at the GAO said they would look into the issue.

With the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City fast approaching, law enforcement officials have ratcheted up security to guard against possible attacks.

Nuclear power plants have been a source of particular concern, as President Bush revealed in his State of the Union address Tuesday night that U.S. personnel in Afghanistan have found “diagrams of American nuclear power plants” and other sensitive facilities. Authorities have warned reactor facilities to take extra precautions to guard against attacks.

Mueller, speaking with reporters Thursday, said the FBI has “moved heaven and earth to provide security for the Super Bowl and the Olympics, and I think we’ve done a good job in enhancing security.”

But he added that “we’re still in a very high state of alert,” driven in part by the cache of terrorist planning documents and other material discovered in the rubble of former Al Qaeda compounds in Afghanistan.

Although Mueller did not refer specifically to the discovery of the GAO security report in Afghanistan, he said Americans should be worried by the “types of schemes” detailed in Afghan documents. “That people were plotting these various things is substantial,” he said.

Mueller, who just returned from a trip to Afghanistan and the Middle East, where he visited FBI agents stationed in the region, said investigators now believe the Sept. 11 attacks were planned in Germany, Malaysia and “perhaps in other countries.”

Although Germany’s role as a meeting ground for terrorist ringleader Mohamed Atta and associates has been widely known for months, Mueller’s comments marked the first time that the Bush administration has publicly identified Malaysia as a critical site for the plot.

Mueller refused to comment on reports that Zacarias Moussaoui, the French Algerian in custody in Virginia as an alleged co-conspirator in the Sept. 11 attacks, had financial and political ties to suspected terrorists in Malaysia, including a former army captain.

Even so, his comments naming Malaysia as a key site for Sept. 11 planning appear likely to rankle Malaysian officials, who in recent days have sought to deflect accusations that their country was a staging area for the attacks.

Despite the massive roundup of possible terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mueller said Al Qaeda operatives probably remain in the United States.

“There may well be those in the United States who, having been trained by Al Qaeda, can come together with others for a particular terrorist attack,” he said.

“Can I say there are none in the United States? No, I will not say that. Do I know for sure that there are some in the United States? I would say that I believe there are, but I cannot say for sure.”

Mueller stressed that preventing terrorist attacks is now the FBI’s primary mission, even at the expense of such traditional roles as chasing down bank robbers and busting drug rings.

In an effort to bolster the FBI’s operation, Mueller on Thursday stepped up his long-delayed management reshuffling at the bureau, appointing two veteran agents to top posts in counter-terrorism.

Pat D’Amuro, who has headed the Sept. 11 probe and also oversaw earlier terror investigations, will serve as assistant director for counter-terrorism, and Tim Caruso, a 23-year veteran, will serve as deputy executive assistant director for counterintelligence and counter-terrorism.

Last month, Mueller quietly demoted one of the bureau’s highest-ranking women, Sheila Horan, from her post as acting head of the national security division. Mueller declined Thursday to discuss his reasons for the move but said he was “hurt” by reports that he was dissatisfied with her performance on espionage cases. The reports, he said, besmirched the reputation of “someone who has had an excellent career in the FBI.”