US still at risk six years after 9/11

UNITED STATES: The United States remains at risk from attack even though it may be better prepared to fight the “war on terror,” US security chiefs warned on the eve of the sixth anniversary of the September 11 strikes.

The warning comes after elusive Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden vowed an escalation in the war in Iraq in a new video released to mark Tuesday’s anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“While we have successfully raised our barrier against terrorist attacks, the fact remains that we are still a nation at risk,” said Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Homeland Security that was set up immediately after 9/11 to protect the United States from future attacks.

“We continue to face a persistent threat to our homeland over the next several years,” he told a congressional hearing Monday on “confronting the terrorist threat to the homeland six years after 9/11.”

Despite maintaining a constant alert for possible Al-Qaeda attacks, authorities could not discount dangers posed by homegrown terrorists and isolated radical individuals or groups that initiated their own plots, he said.

“While no one can guarantee we will not face another terrorist strike in the next six years, if we allow ourselves to step back from the fight, if we allow our progress to halt, if we don’t continue to build the necessary tools to stay ahead of terrorist threats, then we will most certainly suffer the consequences,” he warned.

Chertoff announced proposed regulation requiring general aviation aircraft entering the United States to provide comprehensive passenger manifest information to US authorities prior to departure.

“This will help us prevent private aircraft from being used to bring potentially dangerous people or weapons into the United States,” he said.

Also, by the end of the year, the United States will be scanning virtually every container that came into the country by sea, he said.

Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, warned that the United States would “face a persistent and evolving terrorist threat over the next three years,” citing the Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah groups as key concerns.

“We judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment,” McConnell said.

While Al-Qaeda would remain the “most serious terrorist treat,” the Hezbollah militant group could stage an attack on the United States if it believed the US posed a direct threat to the group or to its alleged backer Iran, he said.

“Perhaps the gravest danger the United States faces is complacency as the years since 9/11 pass,” warned FBI chief Robert Mueller, saying the threat posed by Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups “remain serious.”

He said a top US concern was Al-Qaeda-trained and other terror groups coming in from Europe.

John Redd, the director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, said the United States was “safer than we were on September 11, 2001, but we are not safe.

“Nor are we likely to be for a generation or more,” he said. “There are many battles yet to be fought and setbacks are certain to come along the way.”

Washington, Tuesday, AFP