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Cyber Attack Likely

Increasing Danger of Attack

Internet Monitored Asama bin Laden

Hamas Terror Operations

Iran's Shahbab-3 Missile

US- Russian Counter-Terrorism Working Group

November 17 Group

Cyber Attack Likely

There is a 50% chance that the next time al-Qaeda terrorists strike the United States, their attack will include a cyber attack, warned Rep. Lamar Smith R, Texas. In closed-door briefings for members of Congress, Smith said officials from federal law enforcement and intelligence-gathering agencies disclosed that al-Qaeda operatives have been exploring U.S. Web sites and probing the electronic infrastructure of American companies in search of ways to disable power and water supplies, disrupt phone service and damage other parts of the critical infrastructure. The US anticipates a year of internet terror. 

Increasing Danger of Attack

For many years, many thought terrorism was something conducted by radical groups against people in countries other than the United States. Even when US citizens became the greatest target worldwide, many still failed to understand the threat. Events of the past few years have brought home the truth that terrorism is alive and well worldwide and the US is not immune. Terrorism takes many forms. Electronic terrorism is potentially one of the most debilitating whose impact can seriously degrade our communications, power supplies, banking, commerce, flight safety, and much more. Through these pages we examine the types of terrorism, history, threat, intelligence operations, and mobilization of our country to counter in the past and hopefully the future. National security is the issue and  the heart of the discussion.

US intelligence agents in pursuit of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden are now said to be monitoring websites for messages to his followers. Counter-terrorism experts reportedly believe they have found markers or code words that indicate bin Laden has been attempting to signal to supporters that he is alive.

The FBI has formed a new Intelligence Analysis unit The new analysts, several of whom have worked for the CIA, are reportedly interpreting raw intelligence in a way new to the FBI, with an emphasis on warning and on disrupting terrorists' plans well before the FBI can meet the legal standards for arrests and prosecutions. According to Pat Damuro, the FBI's Assistant Director of Counter-Terrorism, these analysts aren't focused on specific cases but are "looking over the horizon" for emerging threats and trends.

Hamas Terror Operations

In the wake of an international outcry over the 15Palestinian civilians Israel killed in the process of assassinating senior Hamas leader Sheik Salah Shehadah last week, Israeli leaders said they wouldn't have dropped the one-ton bomb on his Gaza hideout if they had known the result in advance. But given Shehadah's recent achievements, it is clear why Israeli security officials wanted him gone. Palestinian officials and Israeli security sources tell TIME the 49-year-old Gazan had transformed Hamas' terror operations over the past year. From Gaza, Shehadah used e-mail and cellphone text messages to rebuild West Bank terror cells destroyed by the Israeli operations. According to Israeli intelligence officials, Shehadah recently smuggled about half a dozen highly skilled bomb makers from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank to replace men arrested or killed in recent Israeli sweeps there. These "masters," as Israeli intelligence calls them, brought with them new, improved explosives formulas, which use levels of urea higher than in previous recipes to create a bomb that's more stable and more powerful. Shehadah also organized the manufacture of mortars and of Hamas' Qassem II rockets and exported the know-how from Gaza to the West Bank, according to Israeli security officials. But he may prove an even more lethal force in death. In the days before his assassination, relatively moderate Hamas leaders in Gaza were secretly talking to senior officials in Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. Palestinian officials close to Arafat say the Palestinian leader wanted to calm the violence because he felt it was undermining his global stature. The Hamas leaders were considering a brief truce, but the rage caused by the death of Shehadah and the civilians around him ended that prospect. Hamas will struggle to find an organizer as good as Shehadah. But his immediate legacy remains the network he built in the West Bank, and it is primed to take an awful revenge on Israelis.

Iran's Shahbab-3 Missile  

The US reportedly no longer considers Iran's Shahab-3 missile as 'under development' but considers it as operational and deployed. The medium range ballistic missile has had a troubled test program, with several flight test missiles exploding during their boost phase, but now, regardless of their unreliability, at least a few missiles are considered to be "likely deployed." Shahab-3 has a range of 800 miles according to US intelligence, making it capable of hitting most of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Not mentioned in the off-the-record statements to the press, the missile is obviously also capable of hitting Iran's principal enemy (at least up to now), it's neighbor, Iraq. The state of hostility and reciprocal threat-perception between these two states is almost universally overlooked in US political media coverage of the region.

            The Shahab-3's design is based on the North Korean No Dong missile, and it incorporates basic old conventional Chinese and Russian technology. Israeli intelligence is said to assess the missile as having a much longer range of 1,860 miles. If the missile actually has this range, it could put Tel Aviv, Cairo and Athens at risk. Whether this difference in estimates is based on hard facts or political needs is undetermined.

             If the US government no longer considers the Shahab-3 as experimental, but instead as a weapon that needs to be factored into US operational planning, it would reflect "a ratcheting up" of official public media concern about the Iran's weapons-of-mass destruction program. Iran's alleged pursuit of a missile program, in conjunction with its reported support of a terrorist organization active against Israel in Lebanon (Hezbollah), are in line with the US Administration's designation of Iran as one of the "axis of evil" nations. In a "future" perspective, this means that after Iraq's coming defeat, it will be Iran's turn. A cold-eyed political assessment would consider that bringing these two states to heel will assure our access to Central Asian oil and gas supplies and remove any potential regional threat to Israel.

US-Russia Cou nter-Terrorism Working Group 

The seventh US-Russia Counter-Terrorism Working Group meeting took place on 26 July at the US Naval Academy. This was a meeting with an expanded agenda and high-level representation. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the senior US representative, while the Russian delegation was led by the Russian First Deputy Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Trubnikov. The meeting was the first one with a broadened mandate endorsed by presidents Bush and Putin in Moscow, including wide-ranging discussions on cooperation in combating nuclear, biological and chemical terrorism, weapons proliferation and narcotics. Counter-terrorism in Afghanistan were discussed, but also cooperation in other regions, such as Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. After the previous working group meeting, the sixth, held in Washington last February, a joint statement was released that read: "US-Russian military cooperation as part of counter-terrorist operations in Afghanistan has been invaluable and unprecedented, and has directly contributed to the successes realized in the global war on terrorism." Cooperation apparently is being extended from tactical and military to political and global. The intelligence component of this cooperation is unknown.

November 17 Group 

For almost 30 years the terrorist group 'November 17',named after the date of a violent student uprising in 1973 that helped bring down a seven-year military junta in 1974, has evaded capture. The main November 17 assassination targets over this time period have been US and UK military and intelligence officers, Turkish diplomats and Greek businessmen. Turkish intelligence has long suspected that 'November 17' had ties with the Turkish Marxist group Dev Sol, also responsible for scores of killings ( including U.S. citizens) since the 1970s. The US State department has long listed 'November 17' as one of its most wanted terrorist organizations.

            The anti-American radical left-wing and extremist national chauvinist group has operated with seeming impunity in Greece throughout the 20-year-rule of the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement, known as Pasok. 'November 17' proclamations often glorified and uncorrupted form of communism and denounced any perceived threats top Greek identity or culture.

            Since the most recent break in the case on 29 June, the police have arrested 13 suspected group members, and charged 10, including one suspected of having helped orchestrate the assassination of Richard Welch, the CIA. station chief in Athens, in 1975. But a 20-year statute of limitations has already prevented Greek prosecutors from leveling murder charges against Pavlos Serifis, a 46-year-old telephone operator accused of being a top boss of the November 17 group. The court proceeding confirmed what U.S. authorities had feared -- that no one may ever stand trial directly for the ambush killing of Richard Welch. Instead, individuals such as Serifis face general terrorist and weapons accusations, that could still bring a life sentence.

            Why did it take so long to break the case? The evidence so far suggest the group was able to maintain its secrecy through the strength of family bonds. But Paul Bremer, who led a congressionally mandated commission on global terrorism in 2000, has noted that "there may have been affinities between the radical leftist terrorists and the (left-wing) political elite that emerged after the military junta." In 1976, for example, the Greek police detained a suspected member of the group after finding his wallet at a construction site that was believed to have been used in an assassination. "Orders came from high up that he be released," said a former American agent, who was stationed in Athens at the time.

            The assassination of a British brigadier, Stephen Saunders, two summers ago brought renewed heavy pressure from the United States, Britain and other European Union partners for Greece to stamp out 'November 17' before the Summer Olympics, planned for Athens in 2004. Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis subsequently went on national television, vowing that he would "completely crush" November 17,

            An American official familiar with the investigation cautioned against raising hopes that the group, long believed to include fewer than two dozen members, had been crushed by the arrests thus far. "There could be more cells involved in this organization than we think." The American Embassy in Athens remains on high security alert. Four Americans have been murdered by this group. That bill remains to be paid. One trusts actions are ongoing.