FBI Expects Suicide Bomb Attack in U.S.

FBI Director Robert Mueller, voicing fears sparked by recently gathered intelligence, said Monday it is “inevitable” that suicide bombers like those who have blown up scores of Israelis will kill Americans on U.S. soil.

Federal authorities said they also believe terrorists could be renting rooms in U.S. apartment buildings so they can detonate explosives and take down the structures.

Authorities have issued interagency warnings about that threat, as well as a formal “notification” that 25 or so Islamic militants may have entered the country in recent weeks as stowaways on container ships from Central America, intent on committing a terrorist act, according to U.S. officials.

Asked about the possibility of a suicide bombing attack similar to those used against Israelis in recent months, Mueller told a meeting of the National Assn. of District Attorneys: “I think we will see that in the future; I think it’s inevitable.”

Mueller also said: “There will be another terrorist attack. We will not be able to stop it. It’s something we all live with.”

The FBI director said such suicide bombings are nearly impossible to stop because of the secretive and insular nature of Islamic terrorist organizations and the difficulty that authorities have had in trying to infiltrate them. “I wish I could be more optimistic,” he said.

Mueller’s speech before the prosecutors’ group at a convention in suburban Washington was closed to the press. The FBI would not comment on the accuracy of the remarks, which were reported by Associated Press.

Mueller’s remarks were confirmed by a Justice Department official, who also said authorities believe the threat of such a suicide bombing attack in the near future is very real, and based on an accumulation of recent intelligence.

“We don’t know when,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “All we know is it is consistent with patterns we have seen overseas and with information we have been receiving over the last few weeks.”

Mueller’s comments marked his first public confirmation of such a U.S. threat by a suicide bomber. But one federal law enforcement official said the nation’s counter-terrorism apparatus has quietly been on high alert for the last three weeks, when a flood of intelligence--and information gathered during interrogations of Al Qaeda operatives--appeared to indicate that such an attack may be in the works.

Vice President Dick Cheney hinted Sunday during a television talk show that he sees “a real possibility” that walk-in suicide bombers may strike in the United States.

Three weeks ago, the FBI issued a federal law enforcement alert to all federal, state and local police agencies to be on the lookout for possible attacks at banks. One law enforcement official confirmed Monday that the warning specifically mentioned “suicide operatives.”

“The bank alert was Friday, then on Monday, it was malls” that authorities believed might be the target of a terrorist attack, the official said. “They put it all together and said, ‘Whoa.’ ... When you start having a few weeks like the last few weeks, it raises the level of concern” even higher than it had been.

A major reason for the concern, as the Israeli government has learned, is that no amount of preparedness can stop such bombers--not swarms of police patrols, stepped-up border enforcement or increased intelligence-gathering missions.

In most cases, one person armed with less than a handful of plastic explosives can walk into a public gathering, flick a detonation switch and kill dozens of people, as was the case March 27 in Netanya, Israel.

That law enforcement official and other authorities said the intelligence intercepts were gathered by U.S. and allied governments by monitoring phones and cell phones, Internet exchanges and other communications, and that the volume of such “chatter” has spiked remarkably in the last three weeks.

In the past, such dramatic increases--even if vague--have preceded large-scale terrorist attacks, including the Sept. 11 suicide skyjackings, according to those officials.

In this case, the law enforcement official said the intelligence has not specified an exact time or place of any planned attack; nor did the threats about attacks on apartment buildings and terrorists stowing away on container ships.

Nevertheless, the official said, “the increased chatter, and the quantity and nature of the information, has been increasingly disturbing over the last few weeks, on a number of fronts.”

Authorities confirmed that much of the intelligence involved suicide bombings by individual members of Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, which authorities believe is rebuilding and redeploying after the punishing military strikes at its former base in Afghanistan.

One alleged Al Qaeda terrorist, Richard C. Reid, allegedly tried to blow up a commercial airliner over the Atlantic in December by trying to ignite plastic explosives hidden in his sneaker, Mueller noted Monday.

The intelligence gathered by U.S. and allied counter-terrorism agencies in the last three weeks also appeared to refer to suicide bombers driving cars, trucks or even boats up to targets and detonating them, one federal law enforcement official said.

For that reason, the nationwide law enforcement warning three weeks ago about banks did not specify whether attackers would come by foot or by vehicle, as was the case when Al Qaeda soldiers used trucks to blow up two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, killing 224 people.

“They were careful to not say it could be just someone walking into a bank, but also [that it could be] a truck bomb,” one official said.

Two truck bombings occurred in recent weeks in Pakistan and Tunisia. Authorities believe Al Qaeda was behind the blast in Tunisia that killed 19 people at a Jewish synagogue, and they are investigating whether terrorists affiliated with Bin Laden were involved in the Pakistan blast, which killed 19 people May 8 at a hotel frequented by Western visitors.

Counter-terrorism experts in and out of government said Mueller is extremely concerned about the potential damage wrought by such suicide bombers. They concurred that such “walk-ins” will probably launch the next attack within the United States.

“I’ve been saying this for some time.... It is just so easy to do,” said Robert Blitzer, the FBI’s counter-terrorism chief until 1998, who has studied Al Qaeda extensively.

“They were able to recruit 19 guys who were willing to give up their lives. What’s to say there aren’t another 20 guys already out there, ready to give their lives as well?”

Al Qaeda’s own operatives have told authorities that they were trained in how to launch such suicide bombings during their attendance at Bin Laden’s terrorist camps in Afghanistan.

One of them, Ahmed Ressam, constructed enough homemade explosives and timers to take down a relatively large building; he was stopped by a U.S. Customs agent on his way to detonate a suitcase full of explosives at Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999.

“They have all had training in this. Over many years, there was a lot of training in Afghanistan, in Al Qaeda camps, that ranged from small arms to all kinds of explosives using vehicles and people,” Blitzer said.

“Just as Israel has found with Hamas, these are religious fanatics who have nothing to live for except to go out in a blaze of glory and come out as martyrs. And that is what they’re doing.”