Fears grow of terrorist with ‘an American face’

Robert Windrem Senior investigative producer • E-mail

In a Frankfurt courtroom last week, authorities charged three German citizens with a plot to kill Americans, accusing them of targeting a dance club in Giessen favored by U.S. service members. The authorities said the plot had the potential to kill hundreds of people and that the men were inspired by the December 2002 attack on two discos in Bali, Indonesia, that left more than 200 dead.

For Western intelligence officials, the plot was not a run-of-the-mill conspiracy by disaffected young men wanting to join the jihad. The reason was twofold: Two of the three were ethnic Germans, and all three had been trained at jihadi training camps in Waziristan, the tribal area of Pakistan where al-Qaida and Taliban training camps are located.

More than anything else, it’s what one counterterrorism official calls “the white men of Waziristan” that worries officials — the increasing possibility that the next attacks in Europe or North America will be carried out not by those with Arab or South Asian passports, but by young Caucasian men from Germany, Great Britain, Australia, Canada or even the United States.

‘No bigger worry’
“There is no bigger worry for the U.S. counterterrorism community than young Caucasian men who have turned to al-Qaida,” said Roger Cressey, former National Security Council official in the Clinton and Bush administrations and now an NBC News consultant.

The most public expression of that concern was a little-noticed speech in mid-August by Ted Gistaro, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats at the National Directorate for Intelligence, created in 2004 to act as a clearinghouse for intelligence gathered by all U.S. agencies.  In short, Gistaro is the intelligence community’s strategic thinker on terrorism.

While Gistaro was careful to note that “we are not aware of any specific, credible al-Qaida plot to attack the U.S. homeland,” he added, “Al-Qaida is identifying, training and positioning operatives for attacks in the West, likely including in the United States. These operatives include North American and European citizens and legal residents with passports that allow them to travel to the United States without a U.S. visa.”

Gistaro was reiterating what CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said more colorfully when interviewed by Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” in March.

“It's very clear to us that al-Qaida has been able, over the past 18 months or so, to establish a safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area that they have not enjoyed before, that they are bringing operatives into that region for training, operatives that … wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles with you when you're coming back from overseas,” he said.

Asked by Russert if he meant that the operatives “look Western,” Hayden replied, “Look Western, (people) who … would be able to come into this country … without attracting the kind of attention that others might.”

White House also concerned
Cressey said the concern extends to the White House.

“In early August, the president had a joint (National Security Council/Homeland Security Council) meeting on current threats, and the single biggest concern is the training of people that Gistaro referenced ... because they can't be tracked and they're not in anyone's database,” he said.

The idea that Westerners have been training with al-Qaida has been among the nagging concerns of U.S. intelligence since shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In 2004, former CIA Director George Tenet alluded to the perceived threat, saying in a speech that “what we are fighting has an Arab face, an African face, an Asian face and an American face — a face that exists in our hemisphere.”

There have been isolated examples of Americans working with al-Qaida or the Taliban — John Walker Lindh, the Californian who fought with the Taliban against U.S. forces in Afghanistan; Jose Padilla, the Illinois man convicted of conspiring to kill Americans overseas; and Adam Gadahn, the California video-gamer turned al-Qaida propagandist, who remains at large.

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