Fears of Terrorist Backlash
US intelligence are in no doubt that a fresh wave of terrorist strikes, including possibly chemical and biological attacks, threatens the United States in the wake of a US assault on Osama Bin Laden.
On September 13, two days after the devastating airliner crashes in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, debkafile ‘s experts on terrorism reported that a second wave had been planned well in advance of the first.
This prognosis has not changed.
According to those experts, the plans were drawn up by the key elements of the Bin Laden network – the Egyptian Islamic Jihad – his primary operational arm, the arcane Iranian-Palestinian-Lebanese group headed by the former hostage-taker of Beirut, Imad Mughniyeh – mastermind of the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei’s terror network, the chiefs of the Algerian extremist GIA, and terrorist groups associated with Iraqi military intelligence, notably the 15th of May group. It was this last organization – not Libyan intelligence – that was behind the 1988 bombing of PanAm-103 over Lockerbie Scotland.
In the estimate of debkafile‘s experts, between 30 and 50 terror activists are organized in teams in the United States. They are all armed with detailed missions for implementation in major US cities on both coasts as soon as the US launches its offensive in Afghanistan. Logistical and command posts to run this second wave have been set up on three continents: Canada, in Toronto and Vancouver inCanada; Europe, in Hamburg, Vienna and the north Albanian Adriatic port of Shengjin, an important Albanian mafia center; and the Persian Gulf, in Dubai.
These centers are operated by an estimated 900-1000 Al Qaeda activists. At their disposal in the US are a further 70-90 well-trained Islamic militants waiting for missions and orders to strike.
An additional 150 terrorists are scattered round Canada, Europe, the Persian Gulf and the Far East, as a reserve force. They live quietly under false identities, with wives and families, usually locals who do not suspect that the head of he family is a terrorist and may disappear forever, if called to action.
The most dangerous terrorists- in-waiting, who live under the deepest cover, are the 100 or so Islamic militants, who are programmed to carry out missions as lone wolves – not all of them inside America. These loners are the ones most likely to carry out chemical or biological strikes, the fear of which is now gripping America. The FBI is looking closely at the anthrax case in Florida that occurred not far from the flying school where one of the hijackers who crashed an airliner in New York on September 11 rented planes.
Any bioterrorists would have received their training in the dissemination of dangerous materials directly from Iraqi military intelligence experts. Iraq is the only country known to be actively developing such substances of mass murder as anthrax, sarin, mustard gas and nerve gases as war weapons.
Many intelligence experts have now come to believe, as debkafile postulated at the time, that the foot and mouth disease which struck British livestock last year was a bioterror exercise carried out either by groups connected with Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network or by Iraqi military intelligence.
