- WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA is warning that a network led by the alleged
mastermind of the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa could strike at U.S.
targets in the coming months.
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- Air Force Gen. John Gordon, the CIA's
deputy director, told a gathering of investment professionals this week
that Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi millionaire suspected of planning
the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, is likely to strike again.
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- ``A clear danger in the months ahead
is that bin Laden, his allies or his sympathizers will strike again,''
Gordon said.
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- Gordon's comments echoed warnings made
by other U.S. officials after the U.S. cruise missile strikes on alleged
terrorist targets linked by U.S. intelligence to bin Laden.
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- A special unit within the CIA's Counter-Terrorism
Center has been tracking bin Laden for more than two years. Since the Aug.
7 bombings, Gordon said, the CIA has received 300 tips pointing to possible
terrorist actions by the bin Laden organization. These included 215 aimed
at ``official U.S. governmental facilities, as well as U.S. commercial,
tourist, cultural and nongovernmental facilities.''
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- U.S. intelligence and law enforcement
agencies, Gordon said, ``have pre-empted additional attacks'' planned by
bin Laden, ``and we have disrupted more elements of his network.''
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- Gordon said the CIA's special unit ``pulled
out every stop'' to track bin Laden but ``we could not predict the location
and time of his attack.'' The effort, however, ``gave us the wherewithal
to determine his central role within days of the African bombings'' and
``laid the groundwork for his eventual capture.''
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- Federal prosecutors said Thursday they
believe bin Laden would go almost anywhere to expand his campaign of terror
against the United States. The exiled Saudi millionaire centered his operation
in Sudan but allegedly set up cells in Kenya, Tanzania, Britain and even
the United States. Prosecutors say he made deals with like-minded groups
in Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia.
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- Prosecutors on Wednesday unsealed a 238-count
indictment that charges bin Laden and Muhammad Atef, the alleged military
commander of the terrorist organization, with murder and conspiracy in
the bombings. They also offered a record $5 million reward for bin Laden's
capture. If convicted, the two men could be sentenced to death.
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- The indictment outlines the wide and
unnerving scope of bin Laden's alleged influence, extending even into an
office in the New York City borough of Brooklyn that aided refugees from
the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, prosecutors said.
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- Gordon said he was confident that bin
Laden would eventually be arrested and brought to justice. Gordon spoke
Thursday in a speech sponsored by Charles Schwab's Washington Research
Group.
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