New push to identify extremists in U.S.

New York Times | July 6 2004

The federal authorities, concerned about a terror attack during this summer's national political conventions, have begun a new effort to identify potential extremists inside the United States, including interviews in communities where terrorists might seek refuge, government officials said.
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The fears about an incident during the conventions or later in the year have also led state and local officials to impose extraordinary security precautions. Persistent if indistinct intelligence reports, based on electronic intercepts and live sources, indicate that Al Qaeda is determined to strike in the United States some time this year, the officials said in interviews last week.
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About half the budgets in each convention city will be spent on security, local officials said. The Democratic National Convention will be held in Boston at the Fleet Center from July 26 to 29. The Republican National Convention will be held in New York at Madison Square Garden from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.
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New York is regarded as a higher risk than Boston by counterterrorism officials because President George W. Bush is a Republican and because of consistent intelligence. "Al Qaeda has unambiguous plans to hit the homeland again," James Pavitt, the CIA's outgoing head of clandestine operations, said in a speech in New York last week. "And New York City, I am certain, remains a prime target."
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Pasquale D'Amuro, the head of the New York FBI office, said in an interview that nearly all of the more than 1,100 agents in the office, the bureau's largest field division, will be involved in collecting intelligence and other security tasks before the convention.
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Convention planners expanded their security requirements, at the urging of federal officials, after the March 11 commuter train attacks in Madrid that killed 191 people, bombings thought to have been carried out primarily by Moroccans living in Spain.
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While the intelligence is not yet clear or specific enough to justify increasing the country's color-coded alert level, the officials said, there are signs of rising concern in the government. On Friday, cabinet members were briefed on the latest intelligence, which, administration officials said, indicates Al Qaeda's intention to strike in the United States, but does not suggest when or where an attack might occur or who might be behind it.
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Recent intelligence reports have hinted that an attack might involve relatively crude materials in an uncomplicated operation, the officials said, suggesting the possibility of a car or truck bomb rather than a plot relying on sophisticated weapons or training like the commercial aviation studies undertaken by the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
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Some of the information has indicated that potential attackers might not be young Arab men, but religious extremists from other countries, possibly in Africa. For that reason investigators have begun to more closely examine visa holders already in the United States from countries like Somalia, Kenya and Nigeria.
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Agents from the FBI are also starting to conduct interviews in communities where potential terrorists might seek to blend in with local populations. The officials said the interviews are based on intelligence about who might pose a threat, but will also be patterned on the informational interviews conducted in Arab American neighborhoods after the Sept. 11 attacks and in Iraqi-American communities at the start of the American-led invasion in 2003.