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Ashcroft: al-Qaida Close to New Attack
WASHINGTON (AP) - Al-Qaida is close to completing its avowed plan to strike America again with a major attack, according to top U.S. law enforcement officials who want the public's help in locating seven terror operatives labeled a "clear and present danger" by Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Ashcroft said a steady stream of "disturbing" intelligence, collected for months, indicates that could mean terrorists already are in the United States to execute the plan, though he acknowledged there is no new information indicating when, where or how an attack might happen. "We do believe that al-Qaida plans to attack the United States, and that is a result of intelligence that is corroborated at a variety of levels," Ashcroft said at a news conference Wednesday with FBI Director Robert Mueller. There was no immediate plan to raise the nation's terror threat level, now at yellow, the midpoint of the five-level warning system.

Six of the al-Qaida operatives, including two Canadian citizens, whose photos and backgrounds were highlighted Wednesday have been the subject of FBI pursuit for months. The seventh, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, 25, is a U.S. citizen who grew up on a California goat farm and converted to Islam as a teenager. He was described by Mueller as having attended al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan and served as an al-Qaida translator.
Goat farmer, ya say?
Each of the suspects, Ashcroft said, presents "a clear and present danger" to the United States because of their language skills, familiarity with U.S. culture and ability to travel under multiple aliases and use forged documents. Ashcroft said al-Qaida has made adjustments to its tactics to escape easy detection, such as having operatives travel with their families to lower their profiles and recruiting people who can pass for having European ethnicity rather than Middle Eastern backgrounds. Ashcroft acknowledged there is no new intelligence about the suspects indicating they are in the United States or part of a specific al-Qaida plot.
Posted by: Steve White 2004-05-27
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=34026