[A-List] US Imperialism: how the world has changed since S11

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

The New York Times

May 21, 2002
Rumsfeld Says Terrorists Will Use Weapons of Mass Destruction
By PHILIP SHENON and DAVID STOUT


WASHINGTON, May 21 ? Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned
today that terrorist states will inevitably be able to attack the
United States with weapons of mass destruction.

"Let there be no doubt, it is only a matter of time before
terrorist states armed with weapons of mass destruction develop
the capability to deliver those weapons to U.S. cities, giving
them the ability to try to hold America hostage to nuclear
blackmail," Mr. Rumsfeld told senators at a hearing on the
Pentagon budget. "With the power and reach of weapons today, we
have little margin for error and we need defenses that can deter
and defend against such attacks."

Mr. Rumsfeld's warning, while not surprising, was nevertheless
sobering. It was the second statement of concern about national
security in two days from a high official. On Monday, the
director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned that
suicide bombings like those that have left hundreds dead in
Israel are "inevitable" on American soil.

"I think we will see that in the future ? I think it's
inevitable," said the director, Robert S. Mueller III, whose
agency is under siege by critics in Congress and elsewhere who
contend that the bureau failed to follow up on clues that might
have prevented the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks.

Mr. Rumsfeld told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that Iraq,
Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea are working on weapons of mass
destruction and can be expected to supply them to terrorists to
which they are linked. Terrorists, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "inevitably
will get their hands on them and they will not hesitate to use
them."

Mr. Rumsfeld's remarks were not startling in view of the Bush
administration's often-expressed concerns about terrorists, but
they served as another reminder of how the world has changed
since the days of the cold war and, more specifically, since
Sept. 11.

Mr. Mueller, who spoke on Monday to a conference of the nation's
district attorneys, did not identify which terrorist groups might
be considering such attacks in the United States, nor did he
provide any specific time frame when they might occur.

His comments came a day after Vice President Dick Cheney issued a
similarly vague public warning about the likelihood of new
terrorist strikes, saying that another attack by Al Qaeda was
"almost certain" but that it could happen "tomorrow or next week
or next year." Mr. Cheney made no reference to the possibility of
suicide bombings here.

Mr. Mueller apparently did not know that his warnings would be
made public. Administration officials said that his remarks and
those of Mr. Cheney, coupled with warnings last weekend from
intelligence agencies that they had detected terrorist
communications suggesting a new attack was being planned, were
not part of any campaign by the White House to raise public
alarm.

Nor, they said, were the warnings intended to deflect criticism
over intelligence failures before Sept. 11. The F.B.I. has been
the target of intense criticism after the disclosure that an
agent in the bureau's Phoenix office warned last July that Al
Qaeda terrorists might be training in American flight schools.

Mr. Mueller suggested that the F.B.I. and other agencies would
not be able to stop new terrorism attacks in the United States or
against American targets overseas because of the difficulty of
recruiting informers who had penetrated the inner circle of
terrorist groups.

His warnings came as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee confirmed news reports that a group of "extremists" may
have entered the United States in recent weeks aboard container
ships that docked in American ports.

"We had an instance in which 25 extremists, as they were
described, jumped on ships outside of the United States, hid in
the container cargoes until they got to the United States and
then disembarked," the lawmaker, Senator Bob Graham, a Florida
Democrat, said in an interview on CNN. "And they've been lost in
the American population."

Mr. Graham offered no other details on the search for the men,
but Congressional aides said the senator was referring to
information gathered from the Coast Guard and intelligence
agencies about a group of Middle Eastern men who had apparently
jumped ship between late March and May 15 in ports in Miami, Port
Everglades, Fla., Long Beach, Calif., and Savannah, Ga.

One Congressional aide stressed that the information had not been
confirmed. A Coast Guard spokesman had no comment about Mr.
Graham's account.

Government analysts and private counterterrorism specialists have
long worried that militant Islamic groups like Hamas or Islamic
Jihad might someday unleash a wave of suicide bombings in this
country in an effort to pressure the United States to limit its
support for Israel.

Their concerns have grown in the wake of the dozens of suicide
bombings in Israel in the last 18 months in which Palestinians,
many only teenagers, have strapped explosives to their bodies and
walked into pizzerias, discos, malls and other places where
Israeli civilians gathered.

Law-enforcement officials believe that an embittered Palestinian
immigrant came within hours of detonating a nail-studded bomb in
the New York City subway system in 1997, in what would have been
the first such attack. The suspect, Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Maizar, was
convicted of the plot two years later, though it was never clear
if he was acting at the suggestion or behest of a terrorist
group.

During the trial, which Mr. Abu Maizar clearly saw as a chance to
publicize the plight of Palestinians, he testified he had
intended the bomb to kill as many Jews as possible.

"I lived under the Israeli Army occupation for 20 years, facing
all kinds of suffering from the aggression of the Israeli Army,"
he testified in explaining his actions. Law-enforcement officials
in New York say that Mr. Abu Maizar had planned to detonate the
bomb in a subway station or on a subway line in a Brooklyn
neighborhood where large numbers of Orthodox Jews live.

Mr. Mueller's warnings came during a question-and-answer session
with the National Association of District Attorneys, which is
meeting this week in Alexandria, Va., outside Washington. Aides
said that Mr. Mueller did not realize that a reporter from The
Associated Press was in the audience. F.B.I. officials later
confirmed the accuracy of the quotations cited by the A.P.

On Capitol Hill, the debate continues to center on how to
investigate previous warnings and the government's responses to
them in the months and years before Sept. 11.

There was new concern among lawmakers over how the Bush
administration had responded to the arrest in Minnesota last
August of Zacarias Moussaoui, who has since been described as the
"20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Confirming reports in The Star Tribune of Minneapolis and The
Wall Street Journal, the Federal Aviation Administration
acknowledged on Monday it had received a warning in August from
the F.B.I. about Mr. Moussaoui's arrest. But the agency said it
issued no warning to airlines because there was no evidence to
suggest he was part of a terrorist plot.

Rallying behind the White House, House Republican leaders said
they opposed creating an independent commission to investigate
how the government dealt with terrorism warnings before Sept. 11.

The Republican opposition made it unlikely that a proposal for an
outside group to scrutinize the performance of the government
would soon be approved by the House, leaving the House and Senate
intelligence committees to make their own investigation.

Representative Dick Armey of Texas, the House majority leader,
said he opposed an outside inquiry. Last weekend, he said, "This
is a professional matter of national security, utmost national
security importance."

"It should be handled professionally, it should be handled
carefully, and it should be handled quietly," he said.

Other lawmakers, led by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman and John
McCain, are pushing to create a 14-member independent commission.
Mr. Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat, and Mr. McCain, an Arizona
Republican often at odds with the administration, have said they
may try to push legislation through shortly after Memorial Day.

Full at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/politics/21CND-TERROR.html