Al Qaeda Lurking in U.S., FBI Warns

Hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives are in hiding throughout the United States planning potentially catastrophic attacks, and the FBI does not know who or where many of them are, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told lawmakers Tuesday.

Mueller’s warning was the latest in a flurry of dire pronouncements from top counterterrorism officials, all but predicting attacks against Americans both overseas and on U.S. soil.

CIA Director George J. Tenet, appearing alongside Mueller on Capitol Hill, said the government’s recent decision to alert the nation of a “high risk” of terrorist attacks was based on intelligence reports that are “the most specific we have seen,” including indications that Al Qaeda might be planning to use chemical, biological and radioactive weapons.

“The information we have points to plots aimed at targets on two fronts -- in the United States and on the Arabian Peninsula,” Tenet told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “The intelligence is not idle chatter.”

Mueller said his disclosures about terrorism activity in the United States -- among his most extensive to date -- were based, in part, on myriad investigations dating back to the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

His testimony and a written statement were rife with both warnings and claims of success in thwarting terrorist strikes. But Mueller stressed that while the FBI is doing all it can to protect Americans, it faces an impossible task that by its very nature cannot be successful all of the time.

“Despite the progress the United States has made in disrupting the Al Qaeda network overseas and within our own country, the organization maintains the ability and the intent to inflict significant casualties in the United States with little warning,” Mueller said. “Our greatest threat is from Al Qaeda cells in the United States that we have not yet been able to identify.”

There have been significant gains in the war on terrorism, Mueller said, with hundreds of arrests, 197 “suspected terrorists” charged in the United States and 99 convictions so far since the Sept. 11 attacks.

There have been no prosecutions, however, of someone charged with plotting terrorist activity on U.S. soil, authorities say.

“But make no mistake,” Mueller said, “the enemies we face are resourceful, merciless and fanatically committed to inflicting massive damage on our homeland, which they regard as the bastion of evil.”

Some of these terrorists could have been lurking in the United States and planning major attacks for several years, according to the FBI director and other federal law enforcement officials.

Mueller did not offer specifics about how authorities arrived at the estimated numbers of U.S.-based Al Qaeda associates, and lawmakers did not press him on the figures. FBI officials said the bureau would not elaborate beyond Mueller’s public remarks. He also briefed the senators in a classified, closed-door session.

In his public comments, Mueller disclosed that:

* FBI investigations have revealed “an extensive militant Islamic presence in the U.S., as well as a number of groups that are capable of launching terrorist attacks here.”

* Although the Al Qaeda network remains the most urgent threat with at least several hundred members hiding in the United States, there are other dangerous Islamic terrorist groups operating within the U.S. in tandem with Al Qaeda or on their own.

* A so-called second front in the terrorism war is evolving, with an increasing number of individuals who could launch terrorist acts out of sympathy or indirect affiliation with Al Qaeda cells. They would operate without the kind of external support or co-conspirators that could draw the attention of the FBI.

* While some of the organized terrorists hiding in the United States are relative newcomers, others are believed to belong to far more established networks that significantly predate the Sept. 11 attacks. The testimony from Mueller, Tenet and other counterterrorism leaders came during an annual hearing designed to brief members of the intelligence community on the status of various foreign threats the United States faces. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Carl Ford, assistant secretary of State for intelligence research, also testified.

Mueller’s remarks about terrorists in the United States seemed all but ignored by senators intent on focusing the debate on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Many senators grilled both Tenet and Mueller on the subject, as well as on Hussein’s alleged ties to Al Qaeda.

During his presentation, Tenet backed away from assertions by other government officials that there are direct ties between Hussein and Al Qaeda, saying he knew only that some Al Qaeda members had been provided safe haven in Iraq recently.

Some of the Al Qaeda members hiding out in the United States have been successful in evading detection by operating under the radar, making them hard to trace, Mueller said. The FBI believes that they have also employed the same kind of operational strategies that worked so well for the Sept. 11 hijackers, including stringent efforts to minimize contact with known militant Islamic groups in the United States that might be under surveillance, he said.

In one major U.S. city alone, one U.S. counterterrorism official said, about 200 associates and sympathizers of Al Qaeda have been identified and kept under watch by FBI and other intelligence agents. About 20 of those individuals have been to Al Qaeda training camps, the official said, and as many as half a dozen have been connected to the latest terrorist warning.

But Mueller also said Al Qaeda has been quick to adopt new strategies as a way to try to outsmart law enforcement authorities who have learned about its past tactics from captured Al Qaeda soldiers and information left behind in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.

Most terrorist cells believed to be operating in the United States focus much of their attention on fund-raising, recruitment and training, Mueller said. But, he added, their support structure “is sufficiently well-developed that one or more groups could be ramped up by Al Qaeda to carry out operations in the U.S. homeland.”

For that reason, counterterrorism authorities are at a loss as to what the group is planning next, although Mueller said he believes the group will favor smaller attacks with a greater likelihood of success, such as bombings or chemical assaults on nightclubs, hotels and other “soft” targets.

“Indeed, the types of recent smaller scale operations Al Qaeda has directed against a wide array of Western targets outside the United States could readily be reproduced within the United States,” he said.

Because the United States is such an open society with many research centers, it has also become a place where terrorists may do research and acquire sophisticated capabilities in new technologies, Mueller said, particularly in the areas of weapons of mass destruction and communications.

Mueller said his greatest concern was that Al Qaeda and other terrorists already have access to detailed research on chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear weapons via the Internet and have expressed an intense desire to produce such weapons.

Hussein might also try to provide Al Qaeda with biological and chemical weapons and so-called dirty bomb material before or during a war with the U.S. “to avenge the fall of his regime,” Mueller said.

Tenet also said the CIA has uncovered disturbing signs that Al Qaeda has established a presence in Iran.

And he agreed that recent intelligence points to Al Qaeda plots both here and overseas that could include the use of radiation dispersal devices as well as poisons and chemicals.

Such devices are sometimes called dirty bombs because they can be built with relatively low-level radioactive materials such as medical waste, which is not difficult to obtain. They can cause widespread contamination and sickness when wrapped around a conventional explosive and detonated.

The warnings were accompanied Tuesday by what appeared to be a new recorded message from Osama bin Laden urging Muslims to defend Iraq -- and strike Western targets -- if the United States launches a military strike.

At least one other nation, Britain, appeared so anxious about an imminent Al Qaeda attack that it sent troops to Heathrow Airport as a precaution against a possible rocket attack on a plane.

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Times staff writer Greg Krikorian in Los Angeles contributed to this report.