Terrorists spoke of attack more devastating than 11 September

War on Terrorism: Intelligence

A series of intercepted telephone conversations between suspected members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network prompted George Bush's decision to order a general terror alert for the United States on Monday, reports said yesterday.

The calls indicated an attack against America that would be even more devastating than the 11 September assaults.

The CIA and the FBI presented the information to President Bush and his national security team on Monday morning. While the intelligence from the telephone calls was chilling, officials wrangled for hours over whether the public should hear about it.

A general warning issued by the Attorney General, John Ashcroft, on 11 October, had drawn sharp criticism from some Congressmen. They complained that the warning then was too vague to be of much use to the authorities but sufficiently ominous to unsettle already nervous Americans.

Mr Bush, supported by Mr Ashcroft, finally resolved that the latest alert had to be put out, even though, as on 11 October, there was little of a specific nature that could be passed on either to authorities around the country or to the public. Mr Bush considered the contents of the telephone intercepts too significant to ignore, officials have revealed.

The US government was still wrestling yesterday with the issue of whether and when to pass on security alerts to the citizenry. The Governor of California, Gray Davis, decided on his own on Thursday to make public a confidential warning that had been conveyed to him and to seven other western states by the FBI on Wednesday. The warning said terrorists might be planning attacks on suspension bridges on the West Coast, beginning yesterday.

The Governor's announcement, made at a hastily arranged press conference, triggered charges yesterday that he was overreacting and sowing panic unnecessarily among Californians.

Transcripts of the al-Qa'ida intercepts have not been made available. Officials said, however, that they were especially frightening. The operatives who were overheard were apparently speaking in tones of great urgency. They were reportedly talking aboutattacks that would be bigger than those of 11 September, which killed about 5,000 Americans.

US intelligence agencies believed the intercepts were credible partly because the interlocutors wrongly expressed their confidence that no one was eavesdropping on them. They were, therefore, speaking relatively freely. They also suggested that attacks would occur in the ensuing days.

Mr Bush and his advisers were faced with a dilemma when they saw the information. In spite of the compelling nature of the telephone calls, once again there was nothing in the way of details. Nobody was able to say what the nature of the new strikes might be, when they would occur exactly, or even if they would take place on US soil or against American targets abroad.

The FBI, headed by Robert Mueller, was opposed to issuing a country-wide alert while nothing more specific could be made available. The agency feared that law enforcement authorities around the country would be irritated by a warning that had no substance. But Mr Ashcroft and other members of Mr Bush's cabinet disagreed, and the President made his decision on Monday afternoon. Mr Ashcroft then went before the microphones half an hour before the evening television news bulletins.

White House officials spent part of the week defending the decision to go public. There is a cry-wolf risk involved; the more times the government says there is new danger when nothing ends up happening, the less inclined people are likely to be to take the next warning seriously.

There is speculation that nothing happened after the alert on 11 October because whatever had been planned by al-Qa'ida was either postponed or cancelled after some of its operatives were caught in the international anti-terror operation and arrested.

It is also possible that, in issuing the alerts, the government is addressing the terrorists as well as everyone else. The message, in other words, is: We know what you are up to, we are ready for it and we are ready for you.

And while most cities across America were already on very high alert, the new warning on Monday may have galvanised officials once more to be on their toes. The warning led to a few additional preventive measures being taken. No-flight zones were established around all of America's nuclear power plants last week as well as around the Sears Tower in Chicago, now the country's tallest skyscraper.

Politics is also playing a part. Washington is acutely aware of the trouble that would ensue if another terror strike were to take place and the media was to find out subsequently that public officials had had some degree of prior warning, but had chosen to keep it to themselves. The advantage of going public with the alerts is that all political rear-ends are thus conveniently covered.

Notably, Governor Davis, a Democrat, faces a re-election race next year. With his dramatic announcement of the possible threat to the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco and other bridges in his state, he assured himself front-page attention on newspapers across the country.

However, the warning about the suspension bridges transpired to be similar to many others sent by the FBI to states around the country in the past few weeks. The bureau has not been able to corroborate the bridge warning.

In its note, sent to eight western states late on Wednesday, the FBI asked for new vigilance at suspension bridges. (In his press conference, Mr Davis identified one bridge that might be targeted that was not a suspension bridge. Aides said he was just speculating.) The FBI told the governors: "Reportedly, unspecified groups are targeting suspension bridges on the West Coast. Six incidents are to take place during rush hour beginning Friday, 2 November, and continuing through 7 November, 2001."

Mr Davis, moreover, was ignoring a footnote to the FBI warning that said clearly that "this communication should not be furnished to the media or other agencies outside law enforcement".

Among those enraged that Mr Davis took it into his own hands to go public with the information was Alameda's County Sheriff, Charles Plummer, who is Northern California's liaison to state emergency officials. He said he did not believe the threat was credible.

"After [Mr Davis] had his press conference, I went ballistic," Sheriff Plummer said. "Now I have people scared, for what? For nothing. I wish the governor would govern and leave us alone."

Tom Ridge, the Secretary for Homeland Security, said there was no "universal blueprint" for deciding whether to release terrorism information.

Federal authorities "thought it was important enough to relate to the Governor, and the Governor thought it was important enough to relate to his citizens," he said. "There are times when I believe both the credibility and the scope and nature of the threats require and provide a basis for our speaking to the public."