Re: [iwar] [fc:U.S..Intercepting.Messages.Hinting.at.a.New.Attack]

From: e.r. (fastflyer28@yahoo.com)
Date: 2002-05-18 20:40:01


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From: "e.r." <fastflyer28@yahoo.com>
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Date: Sat, 18 May 2002 20:40:01 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: [iwar] [fc:U.S..Intercepting.Messages.Hinting.at.a.New.Attack]
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  "e.r." <fastflyer28@yahoo.com> wrote: 
It would be kind of them if they sent us maps and an invitation to get them before their next action, but that is the hard part of the intelligence -a deadly guessing game. As Fred has said before, disinformation eventually lulls the senses and makes it impossible to read the "tea leaves" properly.
Fred Cohen wrote: From The New York Times


May 19, 2002 By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON

W ASHINGTON, May 18 — American intelligence agencieshave intercepted a
vague yet troubling series of communications among Al Qaeda operatives
over the last few monthsindicating that the terrorist organization is
trying to carry out an operation as big as or bigger than the Sept. 11
attacks, according to intelligence and law enforcement officials. 

But just as last summer's threats left counterterrorism analysts
guessing about Al Qaeda's intentions, and believing that the attack
might be carried out overseas, the new interceptions are so general that
they have left President Bush and his counterterrorism team in the dark
about the time, place or method of what some officials refer to as a
second-wave attack. As a result, the government is essentially limited
to taking broad defensive measures. 

"It's again not specific — not specific as to time, not specific as to
place," one senior administration official said. 

The officials compared the intercepted messages, which they described as
cryptic and ambiguous, to the pattern of those picked up last spring and
early summer, when Qaeda operatives were also overheard talking about a
big operation. Those signals were among the evidence that intelligence
agencies presented to President Bush in August about the possibility of
an imminent attack against the United States. 

The senior official said Friday that the amount of intelligence relating
to another possible attack, in Europe, the Arabian Peninsula or the
United States, had increased in the last month. Some of it comes from
interviews with fighters captured in Afghanistan. 

But despite the disruption of Al Qaeda's operations around the world
since Sept. 11, and despite major spending increases and shifts of
resources to counterterrorism operations, American officials say they
have not been able to fully piece together the clues about Al Qaeda's
plans. 

"There's just a lot of chatter in the system again," the official said. 
"We are actively pursuing it and trying to see what's going on here."

The government's frustration underscores the problem in fighting an
unconventional foe like Al Qaeda. 

Interviews with law enforcement and intelligence officials suggest that
in the eight months since Sept. 11 the government has made only limited
progress in its ability to predict Al Qaeda's next move, and that many
proposed improvements in counterterrorism operations have yet to be put
into effect. 

This is despite considerable advantages that the United States lacked a
year ago. The war in Afghanistan has provided a wealth of new
information about Al Qaeda's structure and organization, for example. 

In addition, the United States is also interrogating captured Qaeda
fighters about the organization's plans. Officials say that debriefings
of detainees have in some instances provided general warnings of another
major attack that dovetail with the threats picked up in the intercepted
communication traffic. 

Facing intense criticism in recent days over disclosures that a series
of possible clues about Al Qaeda's plans fell through the cracks in the
months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, officials say that some
significant changes have been made in the way threat information is
studied and circulated within the upper reaches of the Bush
administration. 

For the first time, the C.I.A. and F.B.I. now compare notes on all
terrorist threat information that comes in each day, filtering the
intelligence through what they call an analytical "matrix" to determine
which threats are the most credible and deserve the most attention. 
Their daily threat report is distributed to senior policy makers,
including the White House director of homeland security, Tom Ridge. It
provides a structure for debates among senior officials about whether to
issue public threat warnings. 

President Bush also now receives daily briefings from both the F.B.I. 
and the C.I.A. George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence,
and Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, are frequently present
during those White House sessions. That way, each agency is able to
hear the other's latest advice to the president. Before Sept. 11, he
received a daily briefing only from the C.I.A. 

Although officials say some potential attacks have been foiled, that has
been largely credited to the arrest of terrorist operatives overseas by
foreign governments rather than to intelligence gleaned from intercepted
communications. 

United States intelligence officials said that they began to intercept
communications among Qaeda operatives discussing a second major attack
in October, and that they have detected recurring talk among them about
another attack ever since. Some of the intercepted communications have
included frightening references to attacks that the Qaeda operatives say
would cause vast numbers of American casualties. 

The intercepted communications do not point to any detailed plans for an
attack, and even the messages mentioning mass casualties do not refer
specifically to the use of weapons of mass destruction like chemical,
biological or nuclear devices. 

Still, American officials say they believe the intercepts represent some
of the most credible intelligence they have received since Sept. 11
about Al Qaeda's intentions. They have provided a troubling
undercurrent for the Bush administration as it tries to sort through the
hundreds of other terrorist threat warnings it has received over the
past few months. 

The pattern of intercepted communications that began last October has
helped prompt at least five public threat alerts issued by the F.B.I. 
since last fall. 

By contrast, federal law enforcement and intelligence officials say they
have been skeptical of many of the far more specific threats they have
received from individual informants over the past few months. One of
the problems now facing American counterterrorism experts is that they
say communications intercepts, while vaguely worded, are often highly
credible threat warnings, while the very detailed and specific threats
passed on by individual informants are often far less reliable. 

Individual informants who approach American investigators in the United
States or overseas often know what kind of story will get the biggest
reaction. They also often come forward because of hidden motives,
perhaps hoping for money or entrance into the United States. The C.I.A. 
routinely gives its informants polygraph tests in an effort to validate
their stories. 

But officials say that in some cases they have been forced to take tales
told by informants more seriously than they otherwise might, at least in
part because officials suspect from the intercepted communications that
Al Qaeda is planning something big. 

In recent months, officials have issued threat alerts regarding nuclear
plants, financial institutions and even specific structures like the
Seattle Space Needle and the Golden Gate Bridge, even as some
counterterrorism experts privately regarded those threats as not based
on solid intelligence. 

Some officials say the government's new color-coded threat alert system
is less useful than the system it replaced, because it is subject to
political influences from appointees who are fearful of being criticized
if they fail to pass on every possible threat, no matter how remote. 

Yet even as the less credible threats have been widely publicized, the
more worrisome and credible undercurrent of intercepted communications
has not been made public. 

In hindsight, analysts now view the pattern of intercepted
communications they saw last May, June and July as a sign of the
impending attacks. Those intercepts, coming after embassy bombings in
Africa and the suicidal bombing of a Navy ship in an Arabian port, were
sometimes alarming. 

Their references to mass attacks against American interests prompted a
series of public alerts against possible terrorist attacks last summer,
including one concerning a possible strike over the Fourth of July
holiday. Officials said that they never had any evidence that an attack
would occur inside the United States, and instead focused most of their
attention on possible strikes against American facilities in the Middle
East, Europe or Asia. 

After the summer holiday passed quietly without any attacks, American
analysts were relieved, but still believed that an attack might be
coming. However, they lacked any further details of where or when the
strike might come, and some officials began to think that the immediate
danger might have passed. Now that analysts are seeing a similar
pattern of communications intercepts, they say they are determined to
avoid a repeat of that mistake. 



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