One U.S. intelligence concern is that Qaeda sympathizers, frustrated by their inability to pull off another 9-11, could turn to Palestinian-style suicide-bombing attacks on U.S. interests both overseas and inside the United States. U.S. counterterrorism experts have visited Israel and Jordan to learn how Mideastern security officials handle the suicide-bombing threat. Some American officials are also expressing renewed alarm about terrorists’ using crop-dusting planes to spread biological or chemical agents. U.S. officials say that recent attacks in Bali, Kuwait (shooting at Marines) and Yemen (an explosives-laden dinghy attacked a French oil tanker) could represent a new war on U.S. and Western economic interests.
The threats made against the U.S. economy in a recent video clip by Ayman Al-Zawahiri seem to tie in with fresh evidence collected by U.S. intelligence from Qaeda detainees, terrorist safe houses in Kuwait and at least one captured Qaeda leader. A warning recently sent by homeland-security officials to U.S. railroads mentioned potential threats to oil-industry facilities, shipping and nuclear-power plants, as well as passenger and freight trains. The railroad warning specifically mentioned threats to bridges, engines and hazardous-materials cars. A U.S. official said that computers seized from suspects arrested after the Kuwait shooting contained detailed information on the U.S. rail infrastructure, including pictures of passenger and freight cars. An Amtrak spokesman said that the passenger railroad had not received information about a specific threat to its operations, but customers may notice “increased vigilance” at Amtrak stations and on trains.
U.S. officials say they hope recent arrests of Qaeda suspects in the United States and overseas have disrupted current and future terrorist plots. Intelligence sources say that Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the alleged Hamburg-based 9-11 fixer (and would-be 20th hijacker) has begun talking to American interrogators. British security services made a breakthrough last week when they arrested Abu Qatada, a radical imam with bin Laden connections who had disappeared from under their noses earlier this year. Though Abu Qatada had eluded Britain’s elite M.I.5 counterintelligence unit for months, a friend of the mullah’s told NEWSWEEK that he was located after his wife visited him and inadvertently gave away his hideout by switching on her mobile phone.
