FBI alert adds to fear of attacks on Independence Day

If 11 September, then why not 4 July? The anxieties of Americans fearful of a new terrorist attack timed for Independence Day have been fuelled by a secret alert from the FBI.

It warns of a possible attack on a target in the United States, based on intelligence gleaned from allies abroad, from electronic eavesdropping and from information obtained from al-Qa'ida and other detainees in the Middle East and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But according to The New York Times, which reported the alert yesterday, no single likely target has emerged, meaning that the information was too vague to justify a public warning. But as one official told the paper: "The lack of specificity increases the concern and anxiety that is there." It will also increase public confusion. After endless false alarms, terror alerts have generated into something approaching farce. Officials maintain that only one public alert has been issued this year – on 19 April, warning of a possible attack on banks in the North-east of the country.

But the impression conveyed is exactly the opposite. Almost every internal alert, from possible attacks on apartment buildings to the threat of terrorist scuba divers and the current one concerning 4 July, has become public. The result has been to ensure exactly what the authorities had sought to avoid: a public bludgeoned by countless unfulfilled warnings into a nervy indifference.

The jitters have been increased by separate reports that al-Qa'ida has forged an informal alliance with Hizbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese group rated by the State Department as one of the most dangerous and sophisticated terrorist organisations in the world.

Although officials have long accepted there is considerable overlap between terrorist groups, the link between the predominantly Sunni al-Qa'ida and the mainly Shia Hizbollah is seen as an alarming development. Unlike al-Qa'ida, Hizbollah has never launched an attack on Americans inside their own country. But it has killed more than 300 Americans in the Middle East, including 241 in the 1983 bombing of a marines barracks in Beirut.

Hizbollah was the group that first used the suicide bomber. Its strong links with Iran is one reason why Iran is categorised by President Bush as a member of the "axis of evil". Washington now accuses Iran of sheltering fleeing al-Qa'ida operatives. Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, said last week: "Iran has served as a haven for some terrorists leaving Afghanistan."

What especially alarms American counter-terrorist specialists is that Hizbollah could provide a new infrastructure for a severely disrupted al-Qa'ida. "Hizbollah is the A-team of terrorism," Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Washington Post yesterday.

* Spain's El Pais newspaper reported yesterday that Mohamed Atta, suspected mastermind of the 11 September attacks, held a summit with other alleged conspirators in Spain last summer to plan the suicide flights.