Osama bin Laden  ALSO: FBI denies new arrest in U.S. Embassy bombings

In this story: Primary targets Critics: Money and planning fall short Domestic terrorism Related stories and sites

February 4, 1999
Web posted at: 11:16 p.m. EST (0416 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials have been unusually candid this week about the prospect of a future attack by alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden. And law enforcement sources tell CNN it's not a question of whether there will be an attack, only when and where.

Sources tell CNN -- since the August bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania -- U.S. officials are receiving about six potentially credible threats every day against American targets abroad. Most are bin Laden-related.

Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday, "Osama bin Laden and others like him represent a clear and present danger."

Holder echoed even stronger remarks made earlier this week by CIA director George Tenet.

"There is not the slightest doubt that Osama bin Laden, his worldwide allies and his sympathizers are planning further attacks against us," Tenet said.

"We are anticipating bombing attempts with conventional explosives, but his operatives are also capable of kidnappings and assassinations," he added.

And in a statement prepared for a Thursday congressional hearing on terrorism, FBI Director Louis Freeh wrote, "These loosely affiliated extremists may pose the most urgent threat to the United States because these individuals bring together groups on an ad hoc, temporary basis."

Primary targets

Law enforcement sources say bin Laden's primary targets -- U.S. embassies, particularly those in the Third World -- are at risk despite recent attempts to beef up security.

Bin Laden has been indicted for the August embassy bombings, which diplomats say signal an ominous new era.

Janet Reno and Madeleine Albright

"They were casualties of a new kind of confrontation that looms as the new century begins," said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

To try to prevent more of those types of casualties, administration officials are playing catch-up after a recent U.S. government report detailed major weaknesses in embassy security.

"Certainly no single arrest or shutdown of a terrorist operation will be sufficient," Albright told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on terrorism on Thursday.

Critics: Money and planning fall short

She defended President Clinton's request for $300 million for increasing embassy security next year.

But Sen. Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire, the subcommittee chairman, said it falls about $700 million short of what he said an interagency study panel said was needed.

Gregg said the president's anti-terrorism program appeared to be "put together on the back of an envelope."

"I think we are at the beginning stages.... We're working very hard, and I think we all need to work together on this," Albright said.

The administration is upgrading security in all 122 overseas diplomatic posts, she testified. "We have decided that there is no such thing as a no-threat embassy."

The near-simultaneous bombing attacks August 7 on the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killed 224 people and injured more than 5,500. Twelve Americans were killed, all in Nairobi.

Attorney General Janet Reno testified before the same panel, "There is a threat, and it's real" of a terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction.

Such weapons "are there and are being considered for use," she said.

As for a possible terrorist attack in this country, "We're not going to prevent them all," she said. "There is no way we can do that."

Domestic terrorism

Meanwhile, Freeh told Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colorado, the FBI had "a number of very good leads" on the perpetrators of an October 12 fire at Vail, Colorado, that destroyed four ski lifts, a restaurant, a picnic facility and a utility building.

"It has been intensely pursued," Freeh said.

Campbell said he had been concerned by the lack of apparent progress in the investigation and was worried about "copycat" attacks on other Colorado ski resorts.

An underground group of environmental activists that calls itself the Earth Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for the fire and for one in December at U.S. Forest Industries headquarters in Medford, Oregon.

Campbell said the fires caused $12.5 million in damage. He showed the committee large before-and-after photos of the burned lodge, which had been made of logs.

"I don't see what they gain by burning down a log building. They've got to cut down more logs to rebuild it," Campbell said.

Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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