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Bin Laden will counterpunch, U.S. authorities warn


By Josh Meyer / Los Angeles Times

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   WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence officials believe that Osama bin Laden long ago began orchestrating a significant terrorist counterpunch to what he expects would be certain U.S. retaliation for the attacks on New York and Washington, a Bush administration official said Saturday.
   The official said there is "no doubt" that a response is coming from bin Laden to anticipated United States military strikes.
   "He has gamed out the next two or three moves already. He expects us to respond to the World Trade Center, and he has the next move planned after that," the official said.
   "You don't take as much time as he has and not have planned several moves," added the official, speaking only on condition of anonymity. "It's not about bloodying our nose and putting fear into us. He has a broader, strategic objective."
   That assessment is shared by top intelligence and counter-terrorism officials, the official said, and has been conveyed to top political, diplomatic and military advisers and other high-ranking members of the Bush administration. It is based on intelligence information, a detailed assessment of how bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network operate, and interrogations of people detained in the United States and Europe in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
   The president has identified bin Laden and Al Qaeda as the prime suspects in the suicide hijackings, which killed nearly 7,000 people. Bin Laden is also believed to be responsible for the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 and the terrorist attack on the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen last year.
   Authorities fear that the bin Laden operatives who would carry out such terrorist attacks may already be in place, hidden and ready to go -- just as they were before Sept. 11.
   To find them, the administration has deployed federal agents and intelligence operatives across the United States and around the world. To date, however, it still does not know whether retaliatory attacks would be launched within the United States or against American civilian, commercial and military targets elsewhere in the world, the official said.
   "His men have outstanding operational security, they are meticulous, their plans are well thought out and they are in it for religious and ideological goals," the official said of bin Laden. "If we had the answers to those questions -- when, where and how -- we'd all be heroes. If Sept. 11 taught us anything, it was to not use the previous template of their attack profile as a guide. They hit a different target every time."
   Federal law enforcement authorities confirmed Saturday that they have received classified briefings dealing with just such a situation, in which retaliatory strikes are launched by terrorists once the United States begins a military operation aimed at getting bin Laden, his network and other terrorists.
   "We know that there are other terrorists are out there and that the threats could be growing," said one federal law enforcement official. "What we have to do now is just be prepared."
   Another federal law enforcement source confirmed that a significant number of federal agents are not participating in the current investigation into the attacks. Instead, they are being held in reserve in anticipation of possible secondary attacks.
   Authorities have shared their information about expected future attacks with counter-terror officials in Europe and elsewhere.
   White House spokesman Ari Fleischer had no direct comment Saturday on whether the administration believes bin Laden and his operatives have already laid the groundwork for further attacks.
   "I'm not going to speculate on a hypothetical on top of a hypothetical," Fleischer said. "But there is no question that terrorism presents a challenge to the country. It has in the past, and it may do so again. And that is why the president has demonstrated such resolve in going to battle against terrorists and nations that harbor them so we can forever reduce their ability to strike anyone anywhere."
   Maj. Tim Blair, a Pentagon spokesman, asked about the view of bin Laden's planned response to U.S. attack, said, "All of that is either (about) operations or intelligence. Those are categories we are just not prepared to talk about."
   Administration sources also confirmed Saturday that they believe three men currently in custody were in some way connected to terrorist plots. They are now trying to determine if the three men were involved in either the Sept. 11 attacks, or were part of some future terrorist acts that would follow U.S. military strikes against bin Laden and his network.
   One of those men, Zacharias Massaoui, was detained in Minnesota a month before the suicide hijackings of four planes on Sept. 11. The other two, Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, were taken into custody on an Amtrak train in Texas on Sept. 12; the commercial airliner they had been flying on was grounded in St. Louis just hours after the hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in rural Pennsylvania.
   The remarks by the official mark the first time that the Bush administration has said it believes bin Laden and Al Qaeda already have in place follow-up attacks, and an infrastructure for carrying them out.
   In the past several weeks, administration officials have warned that they believe there exists a "clear and present danger" of more terrorist attacks. In a wide-ranging investigation, authorities have arrested or detained more than 480 people, temporarily grounded crop duster planes and scoured records for information about people licensed to transport hazardous materials.
   The administration is wary of sending soldiers or special forces into a trap, the official said, or of being perceived as provoking another deadly wave of terrorism.
   According to the official, bin Laden "assumes we'll strike at Afghanistan. The theory is that he has two or three (responses) already keyed up. He assumes we will fail, and that they can immediately strike back. But even if he dies, plans for his organization continue and whatever attack is out there is on a dead switch; the people are in place and the authorization is there, so that if a military strike comes, they will put it in motion."
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   In other developments Saturday, arrests and additional information appeared to support evidence of ties between some of the 19 suspected hijackers and individuals living in Europe.
   German authorities announced that they had arrested three men connected to a suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks, on charges of planning terrorist acts against German targets.
   The Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe described the three men as a Turkish citizen and two Yemenis, and said they tracked the suspects through their Internet activity to a Wiesbaden apartment. By doing so, authorities said, they linked the men to Said Bahaji, a 26-year-old German national of Moroccan origin, who is wanted in connection with the suicide hijackings.
   The three men -- identified only as 27-year-old Talip T. of Turkey, and Wadee Al-A., 24, and Shahab Al-A., 26, of Yemen -- had Internet links to Bahaji's Web site, authorities said. That site included advice for joining Muslim fighters in the Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union and for financial support of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, according to the office of Federal Prosecutor Kay Nehm.
   German authorities have established no direct link between those three men and the suicide hijackers, who belonged to a terrorist cell in Hamburg, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
   German police also stepped up security at the British consulate in Hamburg and were said to be investigating as many as six Arab suspects in a plot against the facility.