Commission finds U.S. ill-prepared for nonconventional warfare

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- A presidential commission is releasing a report asserting that United States is unprepared for a nonconventional weapons attack.

The commission, headed by former CIA director John Deutsch, criticizes U.S. preparations for a biological, chemical and nuclear attack as insufficient. The report is to warn that Washington is likely to face an increasing danger from weapons of mass destruction by non-Western countries.

Analysts agreed. "In the last three years, hatred in some quarters against the U.S. has increased," said . Robert W. Chandler, an author and expert on weapons of mass destruction. "At the same time, technology has advanced to the point that the WMD battle can be brought to our shores as well as on a foreign battlefield. The commission's bleak assessment is a correct one, and the U.S. needs to take decisive steps now to prevent and counter WMD attacks."

U.S. official say terrorists could also employ such weapons. They said terrorists, particularly Islamic militants, are adapting advanced technology, including the use of encryption to relay instructions and terrorist plans without fear of them being intercepted by Western law enforcement.

"Some of the fundamentalist groups -- I could talk about this at a different session -- use communications which are designed to avoid surveillance," FBI director Louis Freeh told the House Armed Services Committee July 13. "And encryption is, of course, a tool that is known to them and available to them."

Attorney General Janet Reno, who also testified at the hearing, agreed, She said terrorists have used encryption technology to foil wiretaps by law enforcement authorities.

"Terrorists are now actually using encryption, which means that in the future we may wiretap a conversation in which the terrorists discuss the location of a bomb soon to go off but we will be unable to prevent the terrorist act when we cannot understand the conversation," she said.

U.S. officials believe encryption is used by the organization of Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden, accused of masterminding the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania last August. The United States is trying to obtain the extraditon of Adel Abdel-Meguid Abdel Bary and Ibrahim Hussein Abdel Hadi Eidarous, detained in London in connection with the bombings.

Last Thursday, a spokesman for the ruling Taleban movement in Afghanistan said his movement would not surrender Bin Laden, who has sought refuge in that country. "We will neither hand over bin Laden to any country nor force him to leave Afghanistan unless he seeks it or accepts a proposal to move to a third country," spokesman Wakil Muttawakil told the London-based Al Sharq al-Awsat daily.