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Officials fear new terrorist attacks

WASHINGTON - Al-Qaida and associated groups top the list of threats to the United States, leading government intelligence officials told Congress on Wednesday in a grim assessment that also highlighted Iran's emergence as a major threat to American interests in the Middle East.

Despite gains made against al-Qaida and other affiliates, CIA director Porter Goss, in an unusually blunt statement before the mostly secretive Senate Intelligence Committee, said the terror group is intent on finding ways to circumvent U.S. security enhancements to attack the homeland.

"It may be only a matter of time before al-Qaida or other groups attempt to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons. We must focus on that," Goss said.

FBI director Robert Mueller cautioned of the risk posed by radicalized Muslim converts inside the U.S. and said he worries about a sleeper operative who may have been in place for years, awaiting orders to launch an attack.

"I remain very concerned about what we are not seeing," he said in his prepared remarks.

More than three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Goss, Mueller and other intelligence leaders provided these and other bleak assessments at the annual briefing on threats from around the globe.

Also at the hearing, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby, painted Iran as a leading threat to U.S. interests in the Middle East. In his prepared testimony, Jacoby said he thinks Iran will continue its support for terrorism and aid for insurgents in Iraq.

He said the country's long-term goal is to expel the United States from the region, and noted that political reform movements there have lost momentum.

Goss said that Islamic extremists are exploiting the conflict in Iraq and that fighters there represent a "potential pool of contacts" to build transnational terror groups. He said the most-wanted terrorist in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, hopes to establish Iraq as a safe-haven to bring about a final victory over the West.

Goss also said the intelligence community has yet to get to the "end of the trail" of the nuclear black market run by disgraced Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. Goss wouldn't rule out the possibility that organizations, rather than states, could obtain nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

He also couldn't assure senators the United States doesn't face a threat from nuclear weapons that may be missing from Russia.

In the past year, the intelligence community has been faced with a series of negative reports, including the work of the Sept. 11 commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee's inquiry on the flawed Iraq intelligence.

And next month, President Bush's commission to investigate the intelligence community's capabilities on weapons of mass destruction is also expected to submit its findings.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said his panel will become more proactive in how it reviews the intelligence community's strengths and weaknesses.

[Last modified February 17, 2005, 01:22:08]