Bin Laden ‘directing al-Qaida plans for attack on US’
“What we know about this most recent information is that it is being directed from the senior-most levels of the al-Qaida organisation,” the New York Times quoted a senior Bush administration official as saying at a media briefing.
“We know that this leadership continues to operate along the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” the official said.
The al-Qaida leader is believed to be hiding in this mountainous area.
It does not appear that bin Laden is trying to take an active leadership role in formulating a specific plan, as he did in preparations for the September 11, 2001, attacks, the newspaper added.
However, there is evidence that bin Laden is able to communicate with his followers, urging them to carry out operations in the name of al-Qaida.
On Thursday, the US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge warned Americans that al-Qaida may try to carry out a large-scale attack to disrupt the November Presidential elections, but he did not offer details.
Mr Ridge said that the warning was based on intelligence received from credible sources gathered over the past months.
The New York Times said it was not clear until the comments of the senior officials on Thursday that bin Laden and his top aides were the figures who had prompted this concern.
In discussing the latest threat information, one of the officials said the intelligence was “cryptic” about both timing and location.
There was no specific reference to the coming Democratic and Republican political conventions in Boston and New York respectively, but that remains an immediate focus of concern, the official also told the newspaper.
