4 bomb plots foiled in recent weeks, officials say

By John Solomon

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – U.S. authorities have foiled four bombing plots overseas since Sept. 11, but evidence grows that loosely knit terrorist cells are agitating to strike again, government officials say.

Over the last month, 225 people overseas have been rounded up in about 40 countries based on U.S. and foreign intelligence indicating they were involved in plotting or assisting terrorism, the officials said.

The officials, speaking only on condition of anonymity, said intelligence reports on potential new threats to U.S. interests have grown in quality and quantity over the last week, prompting some of the starkest warnings to date to the American public.

Most of the evidence doesn’t point to specific targets, but rather to “a clearer picture of several terrorist cells looking to strike,” one U.S. official told The Associated Press.

The FBI believes several people involved in plotting remain at large in the United States and across Europe and the Middle East, the officials said.

On Monday, Attorney General John Ashcroft met with Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s interior minister. The FBI and Spanish authorities have been investigating suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta’s visits to Spain. Atta traveled to Spain in January and July, spent several days in a resort town south of Barcelona and was suspected of meeting with Islamic extremists.

Atta also met in Spain with a Tunisian man now in Spanish custody who is believed to have been sent from Afghanistan to supervise Osama bin Laden’s terrorist operations in Europe, Spanish authorities said.

Concerning the averted bombing strikes, officials said the plots involved attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Paris, an American building in Turkey, embassy structures in Yemen and a NATO building in Brussels, Belgium.

At a news conference Monday, Francis X Taylor, the State Department’s top counterterrorism official, declined to discuss details of any thwarted attacks, but said: “Our efforts are focused on preventing terrorists from conducting their operations and we’ve had some success and hope to have many more in the future.”

Yemeni authorities have been searching for a dozen Arabs, several connected to bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, who entered the country from Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.

Ashcroft said Sunday the FBI still is searching for about 190 people it believes may have involvement or information.

“We have a watch list of individuals that we want to apprehend and question and to ascertain with more specificity the extent to which they have knowledge of, or might be in some way related to, either the groups or the actual incidents,” Ashcroft said.

The FBI is seeking a Saudi pilot who bought two planes in August from a small Tennessee airport near Fort Campbell, Ky., where some of the U.S. elite special forces are stationed, officials said.

Asked about the scope of the threat now, one U.S. official compared it to the millennium celebrations in December 1999 when the CIA and other intelligence agencies identified and disrupted between five and 15 potential attacks. Those plots included a hotel in Jordan and the Los Angeles airport, and several bin Laden supporters were rounded up in different countries to thwart the activities, officials said.

Officials said much of the evidence suggests various loosely knit terrorist cells – from Algerians to Afghans – are agitating to attack again. They’re united in their admiration for bin Laden and his calls to attack Americans, but there is no evidence they are being coordinated in a single master plan, the officials said.

Some have trained or received assistance from al-Qaida, the officials said. Others have been linked to bin Laden supporters through financial transactions and communication intercepts, officials said.

Law enforcement officials said they have evidence – some vague, some more specific – that Middle Eastern men have been surveilling targets from nuclear power plants and airports to embassies overseas and tourist locations.

The officials cautioned they haven’t identified a specific threat or plan against a U.S. interest out of the 573 threats that have been processed by the FBI, but if they do, a public warning will be issued.

“We will share with the appropriate parties and the American people credible threats,” Ashcroft said.

The recent foiled plans overseas highlight one assessment of U.S. intelligence about the methods of bin Laden and al-Qaida: they persist in striking targets missed in earlier attempts. The World Trade Center in New York was bombed in 1993, but without mass casualties; it was leveled in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Between May and July, American intelligence braced for a wave of attacks by bin Laden supporters overseas and helped disrupt terrorist plans for attacks on U.S. embassies in Yemen and France and a site in Turkey, a U.S. official said.

The FBI is searching anew for Khaled Alzeedi, a Saudi pilot who purchased two small aircraft from an airplane broker in Clarksville, Tenn., and left the state shortly before the suicide hijackings, according to records and interviews.

Alzeedi’s name appears on a list of people wanted for questioning in the investigation, but Assistant FBI Director John Collingwood said Sunday that the interest in him has to do with something “totally unrelated to the hijackings,”

Still concerned about the possibility trucks could be used for bombings, the FBI also has checked student records at a Colorado truck-driving school, classroom instructor Jack Atencio said. Agents visited the school in Henderson, just northeast of Denver, for a few hours last week, checking specific names, Atencio said.