Author: Richard Sale
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: November 4, 2002
URL: http://washingtontimes.com/national/20021104-81830128.htm
Local and federal law-enforcement
agencies are attempting to infiltrate al Qaeda sleeper cells operating
in the United States and are using disinformation campaigns to expose and
neutralize the terror groups that continue to communicate with one another,
U.S. intelligence officials say.
FBI officials say recent electronic
intercepts of communications between some al Qaeda groups show that they
are "talking to each other."
"The cells are up and active," an
FBI official said of the groups believed to be embedded in most U.S. cities
with sizable Islamic communities, such as New York, Detroit and Los Angeles.
In a review of ongoing U.S. operations,
United Press International was briefed on the al Qaeda investigations by
several current and former intelligence officers, all of whom asked not
to be identified by name.
Former CIA and Defense Intelligence
Agency officials say the terrorists choose run-down neighborhoods because
"in a place like that, you are invisible. People don't care about you;
they don't want to look at you and don't look at you," as one put it.
A former senior U.S. intelligence
official explained: "The members of cells don't think of themselves as
raiding parties but as the front end of an invasion."
"If they can attack, blow things
up and disrupt society, they believe there will be mass defections to Islam
and society will collapse. They can then set up an Islamic state."
The cells, these sources said, are
made up of U.S.-born Muslims and immigrants from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia
and the Persian Gulf states, and number in the thousands. Most are thought
to have entered the country some time ago and are deeply entrenched in
their communities.
To root them out, the FBI has been
busy developing a network of informers in Muslim neighborhoods, including
nightclub owners, waiters and merchants, a federal law-enforcement official
said.
Intelligence is the chief tool in
the war on terror, a senior former Pentagon intelligence official said.
"Intelligence is really just a giant
research operation where you rely on huge archival files," he said. "It's
the most effective weapon you've got."
The next and best weapon in the
war against the cells is infiltration. A longtime covert operations specialist
said law enforcement is using agents who are Arabs and fluent in Arabic,
who then look for ways to get inside the community where the cell members
worship.
Their next goal is "to find out
about the social structure: Where do they worship, where do they entertain,
what do they talk about?" he said.
If it is known where they socialize
and there is probable cause, local police might be able to place eavesdropping
devices on the premises, he said. The goal is to identify and eliminate
leaders, a former CIA official said.
As the FBI and other law-enforcement
agencies gain knowledge, any rivalries among group members can be exploited,
using disinformation to convince some cell members that others are informers
or traitors.
One FBI official explained that
the purpose is to "disrupt" hostile organizations, and that FBI tactics
go back to 1956, when the FBI established its Cointelpro (counterintelligence
program.) This official said the program pitted one group - or even members
of a single group - against another "like gladiators in ancient Rome."
The program has been used successfully
against such groups as the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan, he said.
