Palm Beach Post - July 27, 2002
FBI: Just 200 hard-core Al-Qaeda
By Rebecca Carr, Palm Beach Post Washington Bureau Saturday, July 27, 2002
WASHINGTON -- Senior FBI officials believe there are now no more than 200 hard-core Al-Qaeda members worldwide.
"Al-Qaeda itself, we know, is less than 200," said an FBI official, referring to those who have sworn allegiance to Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
That figure -- far fewer than recent press reports have suggested are in the U. S. alone -- is based on evidence gathered by the FBI and CIA. It includes Al-Qaeda members who are now in custody at Guantanamo Bay.
"Everyone tries to tie everything into 9-11 and Al-Qaeda," said one of the two FBI officials interviewed Friday on condition of anonymity. "There was a recent report suggesting that Al-Qaeda is about 5,000 strong. It is nowhere near 5,000 strong."
Although thousands of Islamic extremists and future terrorists have passed through bin Laden's training camps, it does not mean they are actual Al-Qaeda operatives, the officials said.
The war in Afghanistan has dispersed, killed or captured Al-Qaeda leaders, leaving the terror network fractured and diffused.
As a result, the FBI's counterterrorism division is closely examining Iranian-backed Hezbollah and other radical Shiite Islamic groups. These groups have men, money and safe havens to elude authorities and could strengthen Al-Qaeda.
"Now we are concerned that he (bin Laden) might be reaching out to the Shia side, which we have never seen before," a senior FBI official said. "We are concerned they might start focusing on trying to utilize each other's support networks."
Sunni and Shia Muslims have long been rivals. Historically, an ideological division between the two branches has kept Al-Qaeda and Shiite groups such as Hezbollah from combining resources.
The FBI has launched a new International Terrorism Operations Center within the counterterrorism division in an effort to keep better track of terror groups outside of Al-Qaeda.
"If we don't keep our focus on Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Hamas, the Shia side of the house, we are putting ourselves in a very deep hole because if they decide to join the fray with Al-Qaeda, with the Sunni side, Sunni extremists, this country is in very serious trouble," the senior FBI official said.
Although Al-Qaeda's forces have been reduced, the FBI is concerned that there are still a number of mid-level followers who could strike at the United States.
"There are people out there at mid-level that have come up in previous terrorist acts that we are focusing on that are the operators that could still conduct various terrorist attacks in the United States," one official said.
Some of these mid-level operators concern the FBI more than others. Some planned the 1998 bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Some planned the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. Some planned the Sept. 11 attacks.
"We believe there is a functional arm out there that we're still extremely concerned about that we are aggressively with the agency (CIA) going after," the official said.
Asked about recent comments of another FBI official suggesting that bin Laden might be dead, the officials said there is information that would substantiate that claim.
"There is some information out there that somebody could take a look at and come up with a theory that he might be dead," one official said.
For example, U.S. forces have captured members of bin Laden's senior security detail. If bin Laden were alive, wouldn't his security detail be by his side?
If bin Laden is alive, why has he not made an appearance or produced another videotape, an official asked. The tapes that have been released so far are dated before the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.
"It's curious that you would think that he would want to demonstrate to us all worldwide that he was still in charge, still alive," the official said.
The FBI officials also said the bureau has created a plan to "substantially enhance our ability to detect, investigate and prevent terrorist attacks."
The plan, which was revealed to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees in a closed-door session on Thursday, calls for dramatically improving the bureau's analytical capabilities.
The goal is to ensure that FBI information on terrorist threats rapidly moves from the bureau's 56 field offices to the counterterrorism division at headquarters in Washington.
A new group of FBI "report officers" will take raw intelligence and information from the field and put it into a format that can be sent to local, state and federal agencies trying to prevent the next terrorist attack.
A senior CIA official is training FBI agents to create these reports.