The Associated Press
The gap in the skyline of lower Manhattan, shown Friday, is the site of the World Trade Center.

U.S. authorities say they might never know how the Sept. 11 attacks were organized and carried out.

Unknown dangers still haunt

FBI and CIA work to prevent future attacks

KEVIN JOHNSON AND RICHARD WILLING GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

Originally published Monday, March 11, 2002

WASHINGTON -- Early last summer, FBI analysts who monitor anti-American terrorist groups became nervous about what they were hearing: nothing.

FBI agents suddenly lost contact with secret communication networks that link terror groups such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization with their far-flung operatives. At the same time, about 90 days before Sept. 11, tips to the bureau from terrorism informants dried up. Wiretap information dropped off dramatically. Couriers that the FBI had monitored as they traveled between several terrorist groups' overseas bases and their U.S. contacts suddenly stopped making such trips. FBI analysts, one official recalled, felt "as if our own telephone lines had been cut."

Top FBI officials suspected the silence meant that terrorists were moving toward action. But the officials could only speculate about what was coming, where it would be and who would carry it out.

Six months after attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon killed nearly 3,000 people, shocked Americans into a new reality and put this nation at war, FBI analysts see the intelligence blackout as a daunting symbol for the challenges ahead in preventing more attacks.

Successes

Since the suicide hijackings exposed significant gaps in America's national security, the FBI and its law enforcement colleagues have had some noteworthy successes.

Federal authorities have one alleged member of the al-Qaida hijacking conspiracy, Zacarias Moussaoui, in custody. A half-dozen more key suspects -- including three from an al-Qaida cell in Germany accused of orchestrating the attacks -- are on the run.

The war in Aghanistan and the interrogation of about 300 al-Qaida and Taliban fighters being held in Cuba has permitted authorities to disrupt other potential terrorist acts in Europe, the Middle East, the Philippines and Malaysia.

Using information from the FBI, CIA and other intelligence agencies, police in an estimated 60 countries have arrested or detained more than 1,200 suspects with alleged ties to Islamic terrorist groups. And despite a close call -- the failed bombing of a Paris-to-Miami jet by an alleged al-Qaida operative with explosives in his shoes -- new strikes have been avoided.

Even so, U.S. authorities acknowledge that in some respects, they haven't moved very far past the initial helplessness of last summer, when much of their ability to monitor Islamic terrorists suddenly evaporated.

They still don't know -- and say they might never know -- some basic facts about how the attacks on Sept. 11 were organized and carried out. They're not sure whether Moussaoui was supposed to have been a Sept. 11 hijacker or might have been part of some other plot. They haven't identified suspicious men who were asking about crop-dusters in Florida and Canada shortly before Sept. 11.

And authorities still don't know how many "sleeper" terrorists trained in al-Qaida camps might have settled in the United States, exploiting years of lax border enforcement and immigration loopholes.

Authorities now know the 19 hijackers who carried out the attacks communicated in coded messages in e-mails and on Internet chat boards, some accessed from public libraries. Anti-terrorism legislation passed in October has made it easier for authorities to monitor such communication.

In all, "it's hard not to look at the evidence and say there is no reason for our continued concern," Attorney General John Ashcroft said last week. "There is a serious threat to the United States."

From the small, tightly knit group believed to have helped the Sept. 11 hijackers, America's list of terrorism suspects has grown into an international roster of radical Muslims and shadowy support figures. Their common bond is their apparent determination to harm the United States and western interests. Some are behind bars; others are fugitives.

The group is eclectic: a radical Indonesian cleric, a Christian-hating Malaysian bombing suspect, Rome-based Moroccans with "subversive associations," and many others.

FBI's overseas role

The expansion of the probe has been accompanied by law enforcement's increasingly defensive mode.

Abroad, FBI agents have begun to supplant CIA agents as America's first line of defense against foreign attack. Those familiar with interagency relations say CIA agents, who are limited by their charter to foreign intelligence gathering, continue to collect information about potential threats. But the FBI, which greatly increased its foreign presence in the 1990s under Director Louis Freeh, has taken the lead in giving details about potential threats to foreign authorities, and urging them to follow up with arrests and interrogations.

"The Europeans in particular are being cooperative," says Robert Baer, a former longtime CIA field officer who operated in Europe and who lives there part-time. "They're afraid if they don't help us roll up (potential Islamic terrorists), we'll end up going to war with Iraq, which they really don't want."

Roundups of suspects abroad, the success the U.S. military is having in Afghanistan and the absence of another attack on U.S. interests inevitably have produced some complacency among Americans. But the continental United States is where authorities say Americans are most vulnerable to a biological, chemical or even nuclear strike from a reconstituted al-Qaida.

Before Sept. 11, "all of us were kind of skeptical" that al-Qaida would mount a nuclear attack on America, one key figure in the U.S. investigation says. "After World Trade and the Pentagon, we'll never say never again."

Last week, Ashcroft said there is no hard evidence to indicate that al-Qaida has a nuclear device. But Ashcroft and many in the U.S. intelligence community appear to believe the worst-case scenario -- a nuclear weapon, including a low-level nuclear "dirty bomb" that could be carried in a suitcase -- is now a very real concern.

Pre-emptive strikes

One of Ashcroft's first responses to the Sept. 11 attacks was to direct the Justice Department to go after al-Qaida in the way Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy pursued organized crime in the 1960s -- not relying on arrests and prosecutions, but heading off crimes by infiltrating target groups.

Longtime observers differ on how well that strategy has worked. Author Ronald Kessler, often an FBI critic, says the bureau has performed its new role "flawlessly" with "no slip-ups." But Vince Cannistraro, former CIA counterterrorism director, says more emphasis should be placed on traditional "human intelligence" techniques -- getting "people inside (terrorist groups) and as high up as possible."

For now, authorities plan to continue to emphasize prevention in what Ashcroft characterizes as a "long-term, long-haul operation." The $30 billion budget he is proposing for 2003 reflects that. It requests 2,200 more immigration agents, an additional $411 million for FBI intelligence gathering, and nearly $400 million to develop a new border security system.

Meanwhile, Ashcroft continues to monitor daily threat assessment reports assembled by intelligence agencies, including the FBI. On a typical day, there are dozens of threats. Most are nothing, but a few, though not specific, have been deemed credible enough for the FBI to issue terrorism alerts.

Ask Ashcroft how he measures the success of the terrorism investigation, and he pauses for a moment, his back stiffening.

Finally, he offers this: "We haven't had anything big go bang."

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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