last year, according to a sweeping new assessment of the terrorist
threat issued Tuesday by the nation’s top intelligence officer.
Intelligence, testified at a congressional hearing that American spy
agencies have intensified surveillance of the
affiliate’s operations amid concern that the group — once considered a
regional menace — is focused on the “recruitment of Westerners or other
individuals with access to the U.S. homeland.”
Blair’s testimony came during a
hearing that surveyed an array of threats, from cyber-attacks on U.S.
computer systems to the spread of illicit weapons. But the hearing’s
focus underscored the extent to which a spree of plots that surfaced in
Sen.
said that despite a growing list of national security concerns, “the
top threat on everyone’s mind is the heightened terrorism threat,
especially against the U.S. homeland.”
offshoot is known, has been implicated in two of the most serious plots
to surface in recent years. Blair said the group “directed” a plot
aimed at downing an airliner bound for
providing training and explosives to a Nigerian who was subdued by
other passengers on the aircraft after allegedly attempting to detonate
a bomb he had smuggled in his clothes.
The same offshoot group was tied to the shooting rampage at
Lawmakers voiced frustration with the handling of
both cases, particularly the failure to recognize a series of clues
that preceded the
decision to give the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, access to an
attorney before he could be more fully interrogated.
The hearing also reflected mounting concern in the
U.S. intelligence community that the nation’s computer networks are
vulnerable to hacking attacks, concern that was heightened recently
when the Internet search engine
Blair focused the first part of his testimony on the
so-called “cyber-threat,” saying that the nation’s infrastructure is
“severely threatened.”
—
(c) 2010, Tribune Co.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
