US says chems, infrastructure among terror targets

17 July 2007 18:57  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--The US is facing a persistent and evolving terrorist threat that may target prominent infrastructure targets with the goal of producing mass casualties, top US intelligence officials said on Tuesday.

 

As many as 8,000 US chemical facilities are regarded as potential targets for terrorist attack, according to the Department of Homeland Security, although only some 600 of those are being treated as high-risk sites under the department’s new chemical plant security regulations.

 

In a new terrorism risk assessment issued on Tuesday by the US Director of National Intelligence, federal officials said the US “will face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years”.

 

The unclassified version of the top-level national intelligence estimate (NIE) said that while global counterterrorism efforts over the five years since the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US have constrained the ability of Al Qaeda to attack the US homeland again, that level of protection cannot be guaranteed or assumed.

 

“We are concerned, however, that this level of international co-operation may wane as 9/11 becomes a more distant memory and perceptions of the threat diverge,” the estimate said, warning that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups will continue to seek a means and opportunity to strike within the US.

 

“Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the US with ties to Al Qaeda senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that Al Qaeda will intensify its efforts to put operatives here,” the estimate said.

 

The US intelligence consensus is that Al Qaeda plots against the US homeland likely will “continue to focus on prominent political, economic and infrastructure targets with the goal of producing mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks and/or fear among the US population”.

 

In addition, the intelligence estimate said that: “The growing number of radical, self-generating cells in Western countries indicate that the radical and violent segment of the West’s Muslim population is expanding, including in the United States.”

 

“The arrest and prosecution by US law enforcement of a small number of violent Islamic extremists inside the US - who are becoming more connected ideologically, virtually, and/or in a physical sense to the global extremist movement - points to the possibility that others may become sufficiently radicalized that they will view the use of violence here as legitimate,” the estimate said.

By: Joe Kamalick
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