100 Terrorist Attacks Thwarted, U.S. Says

Federal authorities said Friday that more than 100 terrorist attacks planned against the United States and its allies have been thwarted since Sept. 11, 2001, due in large part to the continuing interrogation of enemy combatants and other captives ensnared in the war on terrorism.

Although authorities would not officially disclose the nature of the planned attacks, government sources said they included threats against American embassies on three continents, a U.S. military base in Europe and American cargo ships passing through the Straits of Gibraltar.

It also remained unclear how many of the threats were against specific sites inside the United States. But federal authorities noted that it was the interrogation of a key Al Qaeda operative that ultimately led to the arrest last year of Jose Padilla, the so-called “dirty bomber” who allegedly was scouting fresh attack targets in this country.

The revelation about the more than 100 planned attacks came in a legal declaration filed by Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

His nine-page affidavit was used by government prosecutors to detail how important the interrogations have become, and to argue against a federal judge’s ruling last month that Padilla be allowed to meet with his lawyer.

The government said it has had eight months to talk uninterruptedly with Padilla, and that a meeting with his lawyer would only disrupt their efforts for his cooperation.

“I assess Padilla’s potential intelligence value as very high,” Jacoby said. “I also firmly believe that providing Padilla access to counsel risks loss of a critical intelligence resource, resulting in a grave and direct threat to national security.”

According to the CIA, more than 3,000 Al Qaeda operatives and associates have been detained in more than 100 countries since the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were sky-bombed. CIA Director George J. Tenet said recently that the U.S. had developed “a trove of information we’re using to press the hunt further.”

Authorities revealed Friday that embassies have been a particular focus of the terrorist network, especially in recent months. Asked how many have been targeted, one U.S. intelligence official replied: “Lots of them. Everywhere.”

The plots were in various stages of development, officials said. In some cases, they were disrupted before U.S. intelligence even learned of the planned method of attack. In other cases, the planning was much further along.

Other threats have been aimed at this country’s airports and aviation industry. Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the Office of Homeland Security, said that “intelligence has come in that says operatives have chosen not to attack something because protective measures we put up around a particular location have improved substantially.”

“You could point to the aviation sector,” he added. “Al Qaeda remains interested in attacking our aviation. But because of the work we have done, we have reduced our vulnerability.”

On Capitol Hill, officials with the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday asked to be briefed on the 100 thwarted plots.

The Bush administration has come under sharp criticism for holding detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in jails and military brigs in the United States, without first charging individuals with crimes. But the government’s legal papers filed in the Padilla case stress that without continuous and unfettered interrogations of detainees, a terrorist attack could slip through.

“Interrogations of detained enemy combatants have produced vital information in the course of the current conflict,” said James B. Comey, the U.S. attorney in New York, where the Padilla case is being handled.

Other sources said plots have been thwarted with a flurry of arrests, as was the case in Singapore early last year when intelligence from interrogations in Afghanistan led to the unraveling of an Al Qaeda cell planning to blow up military transport buses and U.S. warships.

In other instances, a senior U.S. official said, plots have been disrupted by “rousting people at [international] airports, expelling them to another country, preventing them from getting equipment that they need,” or stepping up security in a highly visible fashion.

“Thwarting doesn’t mean a burning fuse was snuffed out at the last minute,” the official said.

One of the most serious threats centered on cargo ships traveling through the Straits of Gibraltar, through which about 200 vessels pass daily.

Authorities learned from a detainee at Guantanamo Bay that Al Qaeda was planning for small inflatable boats packed with explosives to sidle up to slow-moving cargo vessels, said a U.S. military official. Hitting a cargo ship, he said, “would not be difficult.”

The plot was broken up when Moroccan authorities arrested 10 Al Qaeda suspects in May and June. The plan was modeled on the successful suicide bombings of a U.S. warship and a French tanker in Yemen, officials said.

U.S. intelligence officials said their most valuable information has come from senior Al Qaeda operatives in custody, particularly Abu Zubeida, a top Osama bin Laden lieutenant captured in Pakistan last year.

“One Abu Zubeida is worth a ton of guys at Gitmo,” the U.S. intelligence official said, contrasting him with the 630 Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects detained in Cuba.

As it turned out, sources have said, it was Zubeida who alerted U.S. authorities to Padilla. The U.S. native was then arrested in May when he returned to Chicago from Pakistan, where he had allegedly conspired with Al Qaeda officials to detonate a dirty bomb in the U.S.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Michael B. Mukasey in New York ruled that although the government can lawfully detain Padilla as an enemy combatant, the government also must allow his lawyer to meet with him to begin crafting a legal defense for his release.

But now federal prosecutors, using the Jacoby declaration, are asking the judge to reconsider and keep Padilla from his lawyer. They cited a “grave danger to national security interests” if such a lawyer-client meeting was held, because it could break down any trust that interrogators now have with Padilla.

With many detainees, they said, it could take “months even to years” to develop that kind of trust.

Jacoby said Padilla is important to interrogators who want to learn more about the alleged dirty-bomb plot, as well as put together an inside look at the Al Qaeda operation, “including potential nuclear capabilities.”

“The information that Padilla may be able to provide is time-sensitive and perishable,” Jacoby said.

Prosecutors also complained that Padilla’s lawyer, Donna Newman, was contemplating a full week of meetings with him, with no restrictions on the questions she could ask, even to the point of learning what interrogators were asking Padilla.

But Newman stressed that he had a right to meet with her and defend himself: “We have a lot to go over, because a lot has happened in this world since he has been held incommunicado.”

She added: “All I want is to have a conversation with my client, an unfettered conversation, to ask him what I want.”