WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI) -- Second of two parts
Where will al Qaida strike next? As noted in our previous UPI Analysis, the extreme Islamist terror organization's Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack in New York City to destroy the twin towers of the World Trade Center succeeded all too well. However, their attacks on Washington that same day essentially failed, killing "only" around 180 people in the Pentagon. But the White House and Congress remained unscathed.
But this may yet prove to be a sobering case of "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." That is especially the case in the light of a Dec. 24 Washington Post article titled "In U.S., Terrorism's Peril Undiminished" by the well-respected Barton Gellman.
Gellman reported that many law-enforcement officials and even White House staffers themselves were convinced, not only that al Qaida was still targeting 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, but that they would eventually succeed in, as one anonymous White House official so chillingly put it to Gellman, "killing" the White House itself.
Indeed Gellman, like terrorism analyst Joshua Sinai in his post "9/11" analysis for the Virginia based ANER Institute highlighted al Qaida's propensity for returning to the same targets.
Gellman cited Gen. Wayne A. Downing, until July 8 President George W. Bush's deputy national security adviser for counter-terrorism as saying, "These guys continue to go back after targets they have tried to get before. That's why I expect they're going to go back to Washington and why I expect they're going to go back to New York, both because of the symbolic impact of those attacks and the economic effect."
Is Gellman correct in his report that senior Bush administration officials and probably the president himself believe the White House is a primary target of al Qaida, and probably the Capitol, too? There is much indirect evidence to suggest that he is.
* It may well explain why the president spends so much time on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, and away from the White House since this and other locations may well be far more easy to defend against unexpected surprise attack, possibly utilizing weapons of mass destruction.
* It would explain why Stinger anti-aircraft missiles have been positioned around the Capitol and why guards there have been equipped with automatic rifles.
* It would also explain why President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney who, by all accounts have excellent personal and professional relations, avoid each other like the plague as much as possible, putting entire states or large sections of the continent between them. This makes a great deal of sense if they believe that al Qaida is determined to launch more decapitation attacks to paralyze or even destroy the natural line of succession of the U.S. government.
None of this means that, of course that the White House and Congress and, for that matter, the Pentagon remain the only targets for al Qaida.
Washington Times intelligence correspondent Bill Gertz reported Monday that U.S. security officials believed the terror group wanted to crash civilian airliners into U.S. nuclear submarines in at the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii. Given al Qaida's obsession with acquiring nuclear or radiological weapons as revealed by the intelligence recovered at the Tora Bora lair in Eastern Afghanistan in December 2001, this kind of plot appears all too likely.
As Sinai wrote in his groundbreaking ANSER study and in later analyses for United Press International, prime U.S. symbols that also have great economic value and whose destruction could also yield enormously high casualties must also continue to be considered prime targets.
This would obviously include major dams and nuclear facilities, major transportation infrastructures such as the Golden Gate and Brooklyn Bridges and other famous skyscrapers like the Empire State Building in Manhattan or the Sears-Roebuck Tower in Chicago.
But al Qaida has also shown that it is eager to attack "softer" targets around the world while it is being prevented from assaulting bigger ones. The slaughter of around 200 innocent holidaymakers in Bali, Indonesia, in the simultaneous destruction of packed night-clubs a few months ago grimly showed that al Qaida retains an appetite for such "soft" targets too.
Also, many other targets on the island of Manhattan and the City of London -- capital of America's one major power ally in the looming war against Iraq -- must obviously figure as prime targets for future mega-attacks too.
But when one combines the all-to-documented record of what was achieved and attempted on 9/11 with the very real fears and precautions already taken by the federal government, and when one further adds al Qaida's simultaneous taste for mass carnage and appalling symbolism one does not have to be Sherlock Holmes to reach the obvious conclusion. The White House and the Capitol are in their sights. And they will certainly try again.
