Bush's terror info 'confusing'

2005-10-23 13:01

Washington - US counterterrorism experts are confused by a list of 10 terrorist plots disrupted by the United States which was mentioned by President George W Bush in a recent speech, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

The newspaper reported the experts and officials say they cannot distinguish between the importance of some incidents on the list and others that were left off.

Intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the White House overstated the gravity of the plots by saying that they had been foiled, when most were far from ready to be executed, the report said.

Others noted that the nation's colour-coded threat index was not raised from yellow, or "elevated" risk of attack, to orange, or "high" risk, for most of the time covered by the incidents on the list, according to the paper.

Some big successes, such as foiling "shoe bomber" Richard Reid's attempt to blow up an airliner, were left off the government's list of thwarted plots, The Post pointed out.

The president made it "sound like well-hatched plans," the report quotes a former CIA official as saying. "I don't think they fall into that category."

President Bush announced the list of attacks on October 6, describing them as serious al-Qaeda terrorist plots.

"We don't know how they came to the conclusions they came to," the paper quoted another counterterrorism official, who spoke anonymously for fear of angering the White House. "It's safe to say that most of the community doesn't think it's worth very much."

- SAPA