Thu, May 23, 2002 page1

• US officials raise specter of attack

  • AP
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  US President George W. Bush warned on Tuesday that al-Qaeda terrorists still "want to hurt us," while his Pentagon chief said terrorists inevitably will acquire weapons of mass destruction from countries such as Iraq, Iran or North Korea.

  US Secretary of State Colin Powell, too, said "terrorists are trying every way they can" to get nuclear, chemical or biological weapons -- his words part of the latest of a round of alarms from Bush's administration.

  Authorities tightened security around New York City landmarks after the FBI warned of uncorroborated information from detainees that sites such as the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge might be attacked.

  Despite the increased concerns, the White House said it is not raising the nationwide terrorism alert status because intelligence on possible attacks is too vague. In an interview with Italy's RAI television, Bush echoed the general warnings given by administration officials in recent days.

  "The al-Qaeda still exists, they still hate America and any other country which loves freedom and they want to hurt us," Bush said. "They're nothing but a bunch of cold-blooded killers."

  Bush said that if the government got a specific threat, "we would have used our assets to harden" the target.

  US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said terrorists are sure to obtain chemical, biological or nuclear weapons through their links with countries trying to develop them.

  He mentioned Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea as possible sources.

  "Just facing the facts, we have to recognize that terrorist networks have relationships with terrorist states that have weapons of mass destruction and that they inevitably are going to get their hands on them, and they would not hesitate one minute in using them," Rumsfeld said.

  Rumsfeld's warning was the third in as many days from a top Bush administration official as the White House sought to head off calls for an independent commission to investigate intelligence failures before Sept. 11.

  Powell also warned of more terror to come as he released an annual report branding seven nations as terrorist states: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, Syria, Libya and Sudan.

  "Terrorists are trying every way they can to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, whether radiological, chemical, biological or nuclear," Powell said at the State Department.

  White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said the intensifying rhetoric was the result of increased terrorist "chatter" detected by investigators and the controversy last week over the revelation that Bush learned in August that Osama bin Laden wanted to hijack US airplanes.

  In a shift from its previous refusals to give Congress certain information, the administration planned to hand over portions of a July memo from a Phoenix FBI agent concerned about Arabs training at flight schools. FBI Director Robert Mueller and agent Kenneth Williams, who wrote the memo, planned to discuss the matter in a closed-door briefing with the Judiciary Committee.

  The House and Senate intelligence committees investigating the matter have been able to see the Phoenix memo for several weeks, but have not had copies provided to them, a Justice Department official said.

  A Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee said Tuesday that he would press Mueller to discuss why the memo didn't reach the top levels of the FBI or the Bush administration before Sept. 11.

  "It isn't even necessary to see the Phoenix memorandum to question why it wasn't disclosed -- to find out why the FBI doesn't communicate with the CIA," said Senator Arlen Specter.

  Attorney General John Ashcroft met for nearly an hour Tuesday with the four lawmakers heading the congressional investigation of the events leading up to Sept. 11 and pledged to cooperate with the inquiry, they said. The Justice Department had balked at turning over some records.

  "The information we need, we are going to get," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss said after meeting with Ashcroft.

  Ashcroft told the lawmakers that the Justice Department has provided 37 witnesses out of the 79 they requested, along with seven more who are preparing to testify. The department has given the committees 9,000 pages of documents and made 20,000 more pages available for inspection in a secure reading room at the FBI headquarters, an official said.

  Fleischer said of the congressional inquiry, "The administration is committed to working with Congress to get it done and to do it right."

  Top congressional Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle on Tuesday repeated calls for an independent commission, saying it would be better suited than Congress for an inquiry.

  House Republicans lashed out, calling the commission idea irresponsible, saying it would lead to public release of information that could help terrorists.

  The White House may begin routinely releasing intelligence information, domestic security chief Tom Ridge said.

  "We have two choices: You can either keep it to yourselves or you can share it," Ridge told the World Economic Forum at the US Chamber of Commerce. "And under the circumstances, depending on the source and the specificity and a few other circumstances and conditions, we may share it."

  Ridge said predictions that terrorists may target unnamed apartment buildings, for example, were not enough to change the nation's security alert from "yellow" -- the third-highest of five stages -- and retain the system's credibility.
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