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Cheney certain more { May 19 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/15/attack/main509096.shtmlhttp://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/15/attack/main509096.shtml
VP: More Attacks 'Almost A Certainty'
WASHINGTON, May 19, 2002
U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed Sunday that U.S. intelligence indicates al Qaeda is trying to regroup and carry out more attacks on U.S. targets.
"I think that the prospects of a future attack on the U.S. are almost a certainty," Cheney told "Fox News Sunday." "It could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year, but they will keep trying. And we have to be prepared."
Asked if Osama bin-Laden's network was planning to strike American targets, Cheney said: "We assume they are. There is certainly a level of noise out there in the system that would indicate that those efforts are continuing."
The suggestion is that the network is reconstituting itself after a winter of disruptions caused by the U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and widespread arrests across the globe.
"There's a great temptation ... for people to look back at September 11 and say, `Well, we haven't been hit in eight months, therefore the threats have ceded or gone away.' I don't think that's the case at all," Cheney said.
On other news, CBS Correspondent Randall Pinkston reports that a member of a congressional committee probing Intelligence flaws before Sept. 11 is blasting the FBI for not taking more dynamic action on the so-called "Phoenix Memo" -- a document detailing suspicious activities of Middle Eastern men at flight schools.
The classified document was sent to FBI headquarters by Kenneth Wiliams, a senior FBI terrorism expert. It was dated July 10th – two months before the Sept. 11 attacks. The memo:
Named several Middle Eastern men living in the U.S. believed to be al Qaeda sympathizers.
Warned that aviation schools may be used to train terrorists.
Urged a nationwide canvas of aviation schools for middle eastern students.
Republican Senator Richard Shelby said he's thinks it's possible that if those men had been detained and questioned, they might have led investigators to the hijackers.
Shelby, a member of the congressional committee probing U.S. intelligence mistakes, called the Phoenix memo "dynamite." He said he was stunned that the FBI failed to share it with the CIA or National Security Council.
"It went to Washington and nothing was done about it. The FBI was either asleep or inept or both,'' said Shelby.
"Somebody should have paid attention to it,'' said retired FBI agent Ron Meyers, who worked in the Phoenix office. Meyers blames Justice Department rules for the failure of the memo to gain attention..
"Sometimes these guidelines in my opinion are so strict that they would almost require you have enough information to indict somebody for a crime before you could even open a case."
In a related development, the White House -- which had objected to a congressional investigation of the administration's handling of warnings before the Sept. 11 attacks -- now says a probe could be legitimate, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller, but only if it is conducted in a non-partisan manner and isn’t designed to give Democrats a political advantage.
The White House doesn't want "a fishing expedition" that becomes, in spokesman Ari Fleischer's words, "an endless waste of taxpayer money in an open-ended congressional investigation," Knoller says.
Democrats insisted their motive was simply to help avoid Sept. 11-like attacks in the future.
©MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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