Snoozing On Sleepers

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 8/15/2006

Homeland Security: The FBI says not to worry: Unlike the U.K., there's no evidence al-Qaida has sleeper cells in the U.S. As comforting as that may sound to a nervous public, the notion strains credulity.

For one, the FBI gave the same free-and-clear signal before 9-11, only to learn in the wake of 3,000 dead that no fewer than four al-Qaida cells had been here for years, getting "substantial assistance" from a "web" of Muslim Americans, according to the 9-11 congressional inquiry.

Since 9-11, homegrown and other terror cells have popped up in Buffalo, N.Y; Portland, Ore.; northern Virginia; New York; Miami; Los Angeles and even sleepy little Lodi, Calif. Some have been linked to al-Qaida.

The Lodi case involved at least one Pakistani-American man who trained in an al-Qaida camp in Pakistan, drawing parallels to the London terror cases. The terrorist brought back home a plot to attack U.S. hospitals, banks and supermarkets.

Chillingly, some of the Pakistani Britons just arrested in the al-Qaida plot to blow up U.S. airliners had placed calls to several U.S. cities, including Washington and New York.

Pat Roberts, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested recently that the NSA spy program has turned up evidence of sleeper cells in America. He says the NSA is monitoring calls from an al-Qaida terrorist camp, presumably in Pakistan, to the U.S.

"They're not calling the United States simply to be calling the United States," Roberts said. "I'll just leave it at that."

Still, FBI Director Robert Mueller insists: "I don't think al-Qaida is largely represented in the United States, or people that espouse violent extremism." Really? His counterpart in London, the MI5, estimates 8,000 British Muslims are supporting or facilitating al-Qaida. America has four times as many Muslims as Britain.

Former senior DHS official Clark Kent Ervin says the bureau knows of at least 1,000 al-Qaida sympathizers in the U.S. today — a figure he calls "low." It's possible there are thousands of sympathizers supporting and facilitating hundreds of terrorist operatives here, he fears, and that the FBI has yet to make the connections.

More, the CIA after 9-11 presented the FBI director with a list of possible sleeper cell candidates. Terror expert Ron Suskind, author of "The One Percent Doctrine," says Mueller is reportedly worried about going after them because they haven't yet committed a crime.

Suskind also reported that al-Qaida deployed operatives in 2003 to gas New York subways. The FBI says it was unable to locate the men, who entered the U.S. through northern Africa, meaning the cell is likely still secreted somewhere inside the U.S.

Mueller, a career bureaucrat, is highly sensitive to charges of racial profiling and religious bigotry from the Muslim community. He puts his counterterrorism agents through Muslim sensitivity training and holds regular PC powwows with Muslim groups.

It seems everyone thinks there are sleeper cells in America except for the man in charge of ferreting them out.