Officials Outline Terrorist Threat to United States

by Mickey McCarter

FBI, NCTC, DHS also explain how they work together to defeat terrorists
More than eight years after 9/11, the United States continues to face terrorist threats from a weakened al Qaeda as well as smaller terrorist groups that provide money and training to individuals plotting violence against US communities, the heads of the FBI, National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), and Homeland Security Department (DHS) told Congress this week.

The recent arrest of Najibullah Zazi, who allegedly traveled to Pakistan for training on making bombs, is an example of the prevailing terrorist threat against the United States as terrorists attempt to support the activities of radicals already inside the country, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The FBI also continues to watch for the threat of homegrown terrorists, who have no connection to overseas terrorist organizations, Mueller added. The FBI arrested four individuals allegedly planning to attack a Jewish community center and synagogue in New York City in May 2009, for example, he said.

In all of these cases, the FBI works with federal, state and local law enforcement and intelligence agencies to shut down terrorist operations.

"Our mission at the bureau is not only to disrupt plots, but to dismantle networks so that they no longer pose a threat. And targeted intelligence gathering takes time, requires patience, precision and dedication," Mueller described. It is a labor-intensive process that often does not provide a complete picture quickly, but it is the core of understanding the threats to the homeland..."

NCTC Director Michael Leiter said the overseas threat comes from Pakistan, where al Qaeda's base is shrinking; Yemen, where al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is reemerging; and Somalia, where the terrorist group al-Shabab has been working with insurgents. al Qaeda also possesses a significant presence in Algeria and Iraq, Leiter added, although its ability to strike beyond those nations from those bases is limited.

"We assess that the al Qaeda core is actively engaged in operational plotting and continues recruiting, training and transporting operatives to include individuals from Western Europe and the United States," Leiter stated.

He added: "And although al-Shabab's rank and file fighters remain focused on removing the current government of Somalia vice pursuing al Qaeda's agenda, we are particularly concerned with training programs run by al-Shabab that have attracted violent extremists from throughout the globe, including the United States."

The FBI has been aware that terrorist groups such as al Qaeda have been making intense efforts to recruit Europeans and Westerners to their operations, gambling that they would have an easier time passing through border security operations, Mueller said.

Terrorists also have used the Internet to find recruits, while lone wolf terrorists often turn to the Internet to find materials published by overseas organizations and use it in attempts to perpetuate self-contained terrorist plots, he added.

Interagency cooperation

Despite the recent spate of disrupted terrorist plots in New York, Colorado, Texas and Illinois, DHS has not been inclined to raise the national terror level because officials did not judge there to be an ongoing threat as a part of any of them, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano testified Wednesday.

However, DHS agencies have continued to work closely with FBI and NCTC staff to share information on suspected terrorists as they arise, Napolitano declared. For example, US Customs and Border Protection and the Transportation Security Administration have shared information like immigration records and travel records with intelligence agencies in the course of their terrorism investigations.

The FBI, NCTC, and DHS also support state and local fusion centers, which pool the resources of law enforcement and intelligence agencies at various levels of government. The fusion centers represent good investments for law enforcement agencies, particularly in difficult financial times, because they extend the capabilities of every officer, Napolitano argued.

"[T]hey're a good deal from a law enforcement expenditure perspective, in terms of...the yield per officer, in terms of what you get particularly from a prevention standpoint," Napolitano said.

"So we have a very active outreach program with governors and mayors. And part of that is making sure they know what the fusion centers do and how they, really, from a budgetary standpoint are a very good expenditure of the limited dollars they have," she added.

DHS further has stood up a Joint Fusion Center Program Management Office to provide centralized assistance to 72 fusion centers around the United States, Napolitano revealed. DHS has deployed 70 analysts to those fusion centers, which also should have access to the Homeland Security Data Network by the end of fiscal 2010.

Leiter identified travel to Pakistan or Somalia among US citizens or residents as an area of particular concern to federal authorities. The FBI, NCTC, and DHS have collaborated in reaching out to US communities that face a heightened probability of contact from terrorist organizations operating in those areas, the officials said.

For example, dozens of the 100,000 Somali-Americans in the United States have been drawn to Somali to assist in al Qaeda's battles there, Leiter noted. So federal authorities have reached out to Somali communities such as that in Minneapolis to explain to them the rights of American citizens, to provide an understanding of the US immigration system, and to underscore the dangers of associations with groups like al-Shabab, Leiter said.

Napolitano emphasized that the US agencies have learned from experiences in the United Kingdom, where disaffected groups did not feel like they were part of the national fabric and thus felt less loyalty to their home countries.

"One of the things we've learned from the UK, for example, is that alienation is a factor or an element that is present oftentimes when someone is in the process of becoming radicalized. And so to the extent that we can engage, that undercuts at least that feature of the radicalization process," she said.