Bush Officials Reinforce Terrorism Concerns

Senior Bush administration officials said Monday that they remained deeply concerned about the possibility of a terrorist attack before or after the Nov. 2 presidential election and that they were taking preventive actions likely to remain in force through January.

The steps include intensified FBI interviews of people suspected of having links to terrorists, renewed scrutiny of students for possible visa violations and stepped-up security at polling places.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, emphasized that they had no new information about the timing or manner of any such attack. But they said a continuing stream of intelligence since spring showed that terrorists were intent on disrupting the election process.

Their comments came the same day that the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office issued a summary of a secret audit that raised questions about a crucial aspect of the government’s anti-terrorism efforts -- the ability of the FBI to effectively monitor thousands of hours of audio recordings obtained as part of terrorism and espionage investigations.

For months, officials from the Department of Homeland Security have expressed concern that terrorists might target the election or some other high-profile event, such as the Olympics in Greece or the political conventions in Boston and New York.

At Monday’s security briefing, officials said they were increasingly concerned in part because the other landmark dates had passed without incident and the window of time before the election had shrunk. The election is five weeks from today.

They also said they had received intelligence in recent weeks and months confirming that the election period, which continues through the presidential inauguration Jan. 20, remained of interest to terrorists.

Officials have spoken before of their fear that the deadly commuter train bombings in Madrid on March 11 were a possible template for an attack on the United States. Spain’s ruling party, which had supported U.S. policy in Iraq, was defeated in elections held three days after the attacks.

“The intelligence is that Al Qaeda wants to affect our election,” a senior Homeland Security official said Monday.

The administration’s pursuit of the war on terrorism has become a central issue in the campaign between President Bush and his Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.

Democrats have also asserted that the administration is using the threat of a possible attack to scare the electorate into sticking with the status quo in November.

The officials at Monday’s briefing said they were speaking out, on the condition of anonymity, to put in perspective recent media reports discussing the election-related precautions they were taking.

They added that there was no evidence that terrorists viewed an attack as a way of either defeating Bush or enhancing Kerry’s candidacy.

Terrorists’ primary goals, the officials said, were to disrupt the democratic process and make a violent statement to their own supporters.

Those attending the briefing included officials from the Homeland Security and Justice departments, the FBI and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, a joint venture of the CIA and the FBI.

The officials acknowledged that many of the actions they were planning represented enhancements to existing programs.

Those measures include boosting the frequency with which the Coast Guard boards ships and stepped-up use of canine patrols at train stations and other sites that attract large crowds.

But they said a key difference was one of degree and intensity. “We are putting on a full-court press,” an FBI official said.

A Justice Department official also disclosed that Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft had recently held a conference call with top federal prosecutors on terrorism, but mainly to underscore the generalized need to be alert in coming weeks.

The translator report found that the FBI had not reviewed more than 123,000 hours of audio in languages known to be used by terrorists that had been compiled since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

It also found that more than one-third of Al Qaeda intercepts authorized by a secret federal court had not been reviewed within 12 hours of collection as required by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

The FBI had previously acknowledged problems in hiring sufficient numbers of new translators and linguists who could pass its rigorous security clearances for handling highly sensitive terrorism and intelligence investigations. It has said that it is hiring linguists as quickly as they can be found.

But critics of the bureau said the enormous backlog belied a disturbing lack of progress.

“Unfortunately, this report shows that the FBI is still drowning in information about terrorism activities, with hundreds of thousands of hours of audio yet to be translated,” said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). “It doesn’t do anyone any good for the FBI to have the terrorists’ attack plans in its hands but still not be able to see or hear what the plans are.”

The shortage of qualified translators was among concerns highlighted by the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.

Last month, a judge in Albany, N.Y., ordered the release of two Muslim men accused of supporting terrorism after disclosure of a government translation error on an address book -- a key piece of evidence -- made them seem much less culpable.

The bureau is also being sued by a contract linguist who says she was fired for complaining about security lapses in the translator program. The former linguist, Sibel Edmonds, is seeking to have the government make public a classified report, also compiled by the Justice Department’s inspector general, that investigates the circumstances of her dismissal.