Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
May 22, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Senate committee Tuesday that terrorists will "inevitably" obtain weapons of mass destruction, issuing the latest in a series of warnings from the Bush administration about the likelihood of future attacks and leaving security officials and ordinary citizens wondering what to do.
"In just facing the facts, we have to recognize that terrorist networks have relationships with terrorist states that have weapons of mass destruction, and that they inevitably are going to get their hands on them, and they would not hesitate one minute in using them," Rumsfeld said.
"That's the world we live in."
Rumsfeld expressed similar concerns in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. But his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee came after several pronouncements from the Bush administration that began Sunday, when Vice President Dick Cheney declared that another terrorist strike was "almost certain."
On Monday, FBI director Robert Mueller III said that suicide bombings like those taking place in Israel were "inevitable." Homeland security director Tom Ridge declared Tuesday that additional terror attacks are "not a question of if, but a question of when."
Bush, in an interview Tuesday with Italian television before his departure for Europe today, said the warnings by Cheney and Mueller were general. He said that if any specific threat were made, the United States would respond.
"The al-Qaida still exists, they still hate America and any other country which loves freedom and they want to hurt us," Bush said. "They're nothing but a bunch of cold-blooded killers."
The FBI also heightened anxiety levels in New York on Tuesday by advising officials that landmarks there could be terrorist targets.
Despite the escalating talk about threats, officials have not raised the nation's level of alert. It is at "yellow," the midpoint of the five-level warning system established in March, and denotes a significant risk of attack.
Ridge said the stream of intelligence has been vague. He and other officials said they needed corroboration or more details about dates, locations and methods of attack before the threat warning would be escalated.
The color-coded system was created after complaints from mayors and police chiefs about the generalized alerts announced in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Local officials said those warnings were too vague to be helpful. Now, some mayors said, the administration seems to be returning to a failed strategy.
"This was definitely moving in the right direction, and then came Sunday and it's like, 'Wait a minute,' " said Scott L. King, the mayor of Gary, Ind. "I don't think it's been good and it's not useful. I think it represents backsliding."
Across the country Tuesday, officials and the public were trying to weigh the significance of the new information.
"It looks totally political to me," said Cleveland Mayor Jane L. Campbell, a Democrat. "It appears as if the reaction is, 'Now we're going to tell everybody every time we're worried about anything.' I grew up reading 'The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf.' "
Others said the latest round of warnings is valuable.
Stephen Push of Great Falls, Va., whose wife, Lisa J. Raines, died on American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, last week criticized federal agencies for not sharing more intelligence with the public before Sept. 11. But now, he said, "I appreciate that the administration is being forthcoming ... about potential threats."
Also Tuesday, in a shift from previous refusals to give Congress certain information, the administration showed members of the Senate Judiciary Committee portions of a July memo from a Phoenix FBI agent who issued a pre-Sept. 11 warning of Arabs attending U.S. flight schools.
The July memo was from Phoenix FBI agent Kenneth Williams, who met the panel in closed session along with Mueller. Committee members were not permitted to take copies out of the secure room.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., related that Mueller said he saw the memo shortly after Sept. 11 but still could not explain why it didn't quickly catch the attention of top bureau officials.
-- Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.