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| Sunday, 25 July 2004 |
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Al Qaeda bent on causing mass death in U.S. -Kean WASHINGTON, Saturday (Reuters) Security experts all believe al Qaeda is determined to launch an attack on the United States and if it can will try to use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, the chairman of the Sept. 11 commission said on Friday. "Every single one of them expects an attack," Thomas Kean told reporters, referring to experts who had spoken to his bipartisan commission. The only issue the experts argued about was whether al Qaeda was still capable of an operation like the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks or worse, or whether efforts to disrupt the group had reduced its ability to cause mayhem. "But everybody feels that they are trying to mount another attack, and everybody feels that given their ideology, that they're doing their best to make it chemical, biological and nuclear because it kills more people and that's their goal," said Kean, a Republican. The commission, in a final report issued on Thursday, recommended a major restructuring of how the government fights terrorism, including a new national intelligence director and a national counterterrorism center. Kean said the U.S. government had to act quickly on the recommendations because "time is not on our side". Lee Hamilton, commission vice chairman and a Democrat, said after briefing White House officials that he believed they were aware that change was needed. President George W. Bush on Friday instructed White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card to coordinate an examination of the recommendations by top administration officials and senior officers in intelligence and national security. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said Card would "get back to the president as soon as possible with their advice" although he had been given no specific deadline. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, and Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut said they hoped to have a bipartisan bill by Oct. 1 addressing the commission's recommendation to create a national intelligence director and a new counterterrorism center. "Nobody thinks what's there now works, nobody," Kean said, calling the national counterterrorism center the top recommendation because the biggest Sept. 11 failure was the lack of information sharing. The Terrorist Threat Integration Center, created about a year ago to coordinate terrorism information across government, did not have the necessary stature and the various agencies had sent it their less-experienced people, the commissioners said. Kean and Hamilton said they were unimpressed with the CIA's covert paramilitary actions, which before Sept. 11 had used local agents with little success to attack al Qaeda. The commission said the joint CIA-military covert operations in Afghanistan after Sept. 11 were successful but still recommended shifting lead responsibility for all paramilitary operations to the better-equipped Pentagon. "The intelligence community gets fascinated with paramilitary covert actions, it's pretty sexy stuff," Hamilton said. "The James Bond stuff, and it begins to I think have an impact on the quality of intelligence." One intelligence official said any changes should make sure that the CIA's "flexibility and nimbleness" were not replaced by a more "cumbersome" apparatus. (Additional reporting by Donna Smith) |
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