WASHINGTON Ñ U.S. officials said intelligence agencies have been flooded with disinformation as well as tips, rumors and intercepts that point to a major attack by Al Qaida or its allies. But they said such agencies as the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency are having difficulty determining the degree and source of the threats to the United States.

"Many administration officials have indicated we are very much concerned about another attack against America from al-Qaida or Al-Qaida-related elements," State Department counter-terrorism coordinator Francis Taylor said. "And that's what we're working our darndest on trying to preclude."

Officials said the United States believes that Al Qaida has slipped dozens of agents into the country over the past few months, Middle East Newsline reported. They are meant to join hundreds of sleepers, or agents who were planted years ago and told to wait for instructions to act.

A major prospect, the officials said, is that Al Qaida and its allies are testing the U.S. response by spreading disinformation. They said the aim of the groups appears to exhaust U.S. readiness by hundreds of false alarms before finally launching a major attack.

"We know for a fact that from time to time we get a threat warning Ñ not because there's a threat Ñ but because the people issuing the threat warning want to see what we are going to do," U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee on Monday. "They want to learn how we respond to that kind of a warning. And they jerk us around Ñ try to jerk us around and test us Ñ stress our force in a way."

Rumsfeld said most of the hundreds of alerts received by U.S. intelligence agencies are general. He said the alerts usually do not specify a time for or place of the attack.

The FBI has warned Americans to be on alert for suicide bombers or efforts to mine apartment buildings, particularly in the New York City area. Officials said the warning reflected concern that Al Qaida might use the tactics seen in Israel and in Russia.

Thomas Ridge, director of the U.S. Office of Homeland Security, said despite the recent threats of attack the United States remains at "Code Yellow." Yellow is number three of the new system of five degrees of alert and denotes an elevated risk of threat.

Ridge said the government will raise the level of alert to either orange or red should U.S. authorities receive "creditable, collaborative information" of a terrorist attack.

"That hasn't been done," Ridge said. "We're still at an elevated level of risk."

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