Bush Calls for New Intelligence Director
My Way News

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush on Monday endorsed creation of a national intelligence czar and counterterrorism center - his first steps in revamping the nation's intelligence-gathering system to help prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"We are a nation in danger," Bush said as he announced his position during an appearance with top administration national security figures in the White House Rose Garden.

Bush thus embraced, with some changes, two key recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, which outlined lapses in intelligence that left America vulnerable to the attacks.

Homeland security has taken center stage on the presidential campaign with both Bush and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry dueling over their national security credentials.

Kerry, who has given a blanket endorsement to all the commission's recommendations, applauded Bush for embracing some commission proposals. But he said the president wasn't moving with sufficient urgency. "The time to act is now, not later," the senator declared, saying Bush should call Congress back from its summer recess to begin working on the changes.

The bipartisan panel's most overarching recommendations in a 567-page report were for creation of a counterterrorism center, which the commission envisions as a joint operational planning and intelligence center staffed by personnel from all the spy agencies, and a national intelligence czar.

U.S. Raid Uncovered Al Qaeda Cell's Plans for Attacks
Washington Post

The fresh intelligence that led to yesterday's extraordinary terror alert comes from documents discovered after Pakistani and U.S. forces broke up an al Qaeda cell in Gujrat, Pakistan, eight days ago, U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday.

One of the men arrested in that raid led authorities to the documents, which contained the startling details of al Qaeda surveillance of corporate and government targets in Washington, New York and New Jersey.

Officials from several U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies huddled virtually round-the-clock Friday, Saturday and Sunday to discuss the fast-emerging information, government sources said, assembling intelligence from the arrested al Qaeda operatives and translating and culling through the documents.

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Another senior U.S. intelligence official said the new information comprises a virtual playbook of the tradecraft al Qaeda surveillance teams use. It details, for example, the use of phony couriers and delivery people to get inside the buildings, intelligence officials said.

Reports That Led to Terror Alert Were Years Old
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 -Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert at several large financial institutions in the New York City and Washington areas was three or four years old, intelligence and law enforcement officials said on Monday. They reported that they had not yet found concrete evidence that a terror plot or preparatory surveillance operations were still under way.

But the officials continued to regard the information as significant and troubling because the reconnaissance already conducted has provided Al Qaeda with the knowledge necessary to carry out attacks against the sites in Manhattan, Washington and Newark. They said Al Qaeda had often struck years after its operatives began surveillance of an intended target.

Taken together with a separate, more general stream of intelligence, which indicates that Al Qaeda intends to strike in the United States this year, possibly in New York or Washington, the officials said even the dated but highly detailed evidence of surveillance was sufficient to prompt the authorities to undertake a global effort to track down the unidentified suspects involved in the surveillance operations.

"You could say that the bulk of this information is old, but we know that Al Qaeda collects, collects, collects until they're comfortable,'' said one senior government official. "Only then do they carry out an operation. And there are signs that some of this may have been updated or may be more recent.''

Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House homeland security adviser, said on Monday in an interview on PBS that surveillance reports, apparently collected by Qaeda operatives had been "gathered in 2000 and 2001.'' But she added that information may have been updated as recently as January

Sources: More Targets Cited by Al Qaeda
FOX News

WASHINGTON — Several more banks and financial institutions were detailed as possible targets on captured terrorists' computers than what's being reported, FOX News has learned.

According to a senior defense official, the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J., Citigroup and the New York Stock Exchange in New York and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington were just a few of many buildings named on an Al Qaeda laptop "recently" retrieved.

The American Stock Exchange and NASDAQ — the bulk of whose operations are in Times Square, far uptown from the Financial District — were also named, FOX News has learned.

Very specific details about United Nations headquarters in midtown Manhattan were also found on this computer.

"This is not one, two or three buildings, as was reported yesterday," a senior official said.

Report: Zarqawi Trying to Get Message to Bin Laden
FOX News

WASHINGTON — Jordanian terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, believed responsible for a series of attacks, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq, has been trying to communicate with Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, a senior defense official tells FOX News.

Within the past several days, the anonymous defense official said, a courier had been intercepted inside Iraq bearing a message from Zarqawi to bin Laden. The official would not reveal the contents of the message or exactly when and where its bearer had been found.

Afghans Move Closer to Mullah Omar Capture
Eurasianet.Org

The recent capture of key relatives and aides to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the fugitive leader of the Taliban, is enabling US and Afghan intelligence officials to tighten the net around him and putting pressure on Pakistan to curb Taliban activities on its soil.

On July 6, Afghan soldiers captured Mullah Sakhi Dad Mujahid, the Taliban commander of southern and western Afghanistan, along with a satellite phone, a notebook of expenses and a diary of telephone numbers including that of Mullah Omar, said General Bismillah Khan, chief of staff of the Afghan army.

"Afghan agents made Mujahid ring Omar's number, but Omar put the phone down after Mujahid mentioned a code word that meant he had been captured," said General Khan. "It was just bad luck."

Omar's number, according to another senior Afghan official, was not from a Thuraya satellite phone, which can be easily monitored by US intelligence, but was a local Pakistani number in or around the town of Quetta, the capital of neighboring Baluchistan province.

Mujahid is now being intensely interrogated at the US base at Bagram near Kabul, but a US military spokesman declined to say what additional information had been gained from him.

General Khan said that the notebook Mujahid carried showed that in the month of June alone, Mujahid had distributed $1.8 million to Taliban fighters and sympathizers for buying weapons and other supplies.

Iraq : Clashes reported near al Sadr home
Al-Bawaba.Com

US occupation troops surrounded the home of Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr in the central Iraqi holy city of Najaf, AFP witnessed.

US armoured vehicles, backed by Iraqi security forces, cordoned off the Al-Zahra neighbourhood, where Sadr's home is located in the eastern part of the city.

Smoke was seen rising from the area Monday amid the sound of heavy gunfire, mortar fire and rocket-propelled grenade explosions. A woman was killed in the clashes near the house.

Crude-Oil Futures Flirt With $44 a Barrel
iWon Money & Investing

NEW YORK -- Crude-oil futures in New York settled minutely higher Monday but hit a fresh all-time high just cents away from $44 a barrel, as more negative developments for Russia's biggest oil producer erased market weakness on new U.S. terror warnings.

Russian tax authorities dealt oil giant OAO Yukos another blow, saying they planned to conduct a further probe of its business activities and payments since 2002.

"Yukos continues to be the main reason for higher prices," said Phil Flynn, an analyst with Chicago-based Alaron Trading Corp., which caters to retail investors. Traders said the latest salvo against Yukos showed the Russian government had no intention of letting up on its financial and legal siege of the company.

Yukos faces insolvency as it struggles to pay a $3.4 billion back-taxes bill from 2000. It won a small victory Monday when a Moscow court ruled it didn't have to pay an unprecedented $223 million bailiff fee, but concerns remain about the fate of the company and its valuable stream of crude-oil exports.

At the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil set for September delivery rose two cents to settle at $43.82 a barrel after touching a fresh all-time high at $ 43.94.