Al-Qaida may be recruiting non-Arabs less likely to attract the notice of security personnel to carry out attacks inside the United States, the FBI warned on Friday.
The terror network especially seeks operatives who have U.S. citizenship or legal residency status, the FBI’s counterterrorism division said in its weekly bulletin to 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide. "Finding operatives with U.S. status would greatly facilitate al-Qaida’s ability to carry out an attack within the United States," said the bulletin, obtained Friday by The Associated Press. The new warning comes amid a continuous stream of intelligence indicating that al-Qaida is determined to strike the United States in the summer or fall. U.S. officials have said the terror network blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks hopes to inflict mass casualties again and disrupt the U.S. political process in this presidential election year. |