Senators: Better terror screening needed

[May 12, 2010]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- Top members of the Senate Intelligence Committee called Tuesday for "new defenses" in the wake of the Times Square bombing attempt that would tighten the screening and tracking of travelers and money flowing between the U.S. and Pakistan.

"We are facing a new kind of attacker," one which is "already here, hiding in plain sight," Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said.

Feinstein and other members of the panel were briefed in private Tuesday by intelligence and law enforcement officials on the investigation into Times Square car bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad and how similar cases could be prevented in the future.

Shahzad, a Pakistan-born U.S. citizen who returned from a visit to his homeland in February, is accused of abandoning a bomb-laden SUV in Times Square on May 1. The homemade bomb malfunctioned, and Shahzad was captured two days later trying to fly out of the country.

Both Feinstein and her Republican counterpart, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., agreed that Shahzad had some sort of connection to the Pakistani Taliban.

But Bond said investigators failed to prove to his satisfaction that the group funded the attack and sent Shahzad on the mission, as administration officials asserted in television interviews on Sunday.

"I am not convinced that there was adequate, confirmable intelligence to confirm the statements that were made on Sunday television shows," Bond said. He added that prematurely blaming the Pakistani Taliban instead of casting a wide net for guilty parties could misdirect U.S. resources on the ground, which he likened to a policy of "Fire, ready, aim."

Feinstein said, "We know he received explosives training in Waziristan" in northwest Pakistan, and she thought there was a high likelihood that he did have training by the Pakistani Taliban.

Investigators told the senators in the top-secret session there was nothing in Shahzad's background that should have tipped them off. "Shahzad was almost completely under the radar," Feinstein said.

The senators had feared there was a replay of the Christmas Day bombing attempt of a Detroit-bound airliner, where, as Feinstein put it, "there was a significant amount of intelligence that wasn't tracked" that may have helped catch bombing suspect Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian.

Not so with Shahzad, she said.

Feinstein and Bond both called for greater tracking of travelers who move between Pakistan and the U.S. every year. Roughly 180,000 people travel from the U.S. to Pakistan every year, and presumably return, and about 160,000 people travel from Pakistan to the U.S. annually. The senators also said they wanted better tracking of the flow of cash between the two countries.

"We don't want to harass people unnecessarily, but there are things we should look at, like how money is transferred," Feinstein said. "Bottom line is we have to follow the money. We have to find better ways of doing that."

Feinstein also called for sending the no-fly list to airlines every 30 minutes, more frequently than the current Obama administration plan to update airlines every two hours.

Shahzad nearly escaped the U.S. on a United Arab Emirates plane bound for Dubai. While his name had been posted to the no-fly list hours earlier, the airline had been working off an hours-old version of the list.

Bond and Feinstein both expressed frustration that the Justice Department instructed intelligence agencies to hold off on sharing details of the investigation with their committee until Tuesday. "I have been kept completely in the dark," Bond said.

The senators engaged in a good-natured if public airing of their differences, with Bond griping that Shahzad should not have been read his rights, which Bond said could have kept the suspect from continuing to share information.

Feinstein said the fact that the Shahzad had not yet appeared in court suggests that he is continuing to cooperate with investigators, and share information.

[Associated Press; By KIMBERLY DOZIER]

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