After the failed bombing of a passenger jet on Christmas Day, U.S. intelligence officials told the White House what kept them awake at night was the risk that militants could launch waves of small scale attacks on hard-to-protect targets on U.S. soil.
After the failed bombing of a passenger jet on Christmas Day, U.S. intelligence officials told the White House what kept them awake at night was the risk that militants could launch waves of small scale attacks on hard-to-protect targets on U.S. soil.
The "nightmare" of nuclear terrorism was the theme of President Barack Obama's security summit last month, but many in the U.S. intelligence community believe the chances that al Qaeda will obtain atomic weapons are at the low end of the probability scale and they have more immediate fears.
More likely, they say, al Qaeda and other groups could shift focus to less-sophisticated violent attacks on "soft targets" that have the potential over time to do as much economic damage as another massive Sept. 11-style event.
One official said Saturday's botched car bombing in New York's Times Square, and other recent plots, could be a sign that militant groups, hard-hit by U.S. drone strikes targeting their leaders, were starting to "figure this out."
"They do have the strategic goal of doing something catastrophic to this country," an official said on condition of anonymity. "But we think it's more likely that we'll see a series of smaller-scale attacks -- the subway, the shopping mall -- vulnerable targets that you can't harden."
Such attacks are tough to crack because they often involve American citizens who are unlikely to appear on any government watch lists and are harder to track than suspects overseas because of U.S. law, officials said.
"Most Americans believe that terrorism, proxy wars, violent criminal gangs, and insurgencies affect people elsewhere, said said Georgetown University's Roy Godson, outlining a study on how the "Times Square Bomb Foreshadows Threats to Come."
"The reality is that irregular conflict conducted by armed groups, and states that ally with them, will be our most prevalent and enduring threat for decades."
Frances Townsend, homeland security adviser under former President George W. Bush, pointed to what she called a "dangerous shift" from simultaneous, mass-casualty plots to "higher probability but lower consequence events" that are more difficult to detect and disrupt.
POOL OF SOFT TARGETS
During White House meetings immediately after the Christmas Day plot, intelligence and counterterrorism officials voiced concerns about a wave of smaller attacks, officials said.
Obama vowed to beef up defenses at U.S. ports of entry and improve the capabilities of intelligence and law enforcement agencies. But officials say there are limits to what can be done quickly to protect a vast pool of potential soft targets.
There are about 450 commercial airports and more than 50,000 malls and shopping centers that National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and CIA chief Leon Panetta have both warned could be targets for attack.
"We've had a lot of success in knocking down the terrorists so that I have pretty high confidence that the kind of thing they did on 9/11 we'd be able to stop," Blair said recently. "But that's forced them to go into smaller pieces and that's going to be harder... We have to raise our game and I think we can."
That concern was part of the rationale behind the White House's decision to authorize the CIA to kill American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Counterterrorism officials see Awlaki as a potent threat because they believe he understands better than most how to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities.
A key figure in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Awlaki has been linked to both the Nigerian suspect in the attempted Christmas Day bombing and to the Army psychiatrist accused of shooting dead 13 people at a military base in Texas on Nov. 5.
Inspired in part by Awlaki, AQAP has taken the lead in plotting "less-than-spectacular" attacks that are easier to plan and relatively cheap to carry out, officials say.
Prosecutors said Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad admitted trying to detonate a bomb in New York's Times Square and receiving bomb-making training in a Taliban and al Qaeda stronghold in Pakistan.
"This is a blow back, this is a reaction" to the CIA drone strikes, Pakistani Foreign Minister told CBS News. "Let's not be naive. They're not going to sort of sit and welcome you to eliminate them. They're going to fight back."
Since the summer of 2008, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas have killed more 500 militant, according to U.S. estimates. The vast majority of those killed have been lower-level fighters.
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