Opportunity Knocks With Embassy Scare
Updated: 1:39pm UK, Monday 05 August 2013
By Sam Kiley, Middle East Correspondent
Talk about an opportunity.
Intelligence, from somewhere, indicated a serious plot to attack US interests - notably an embassy, in an unspecified Muslim nation.
Washington moves quickly. Some 22 embassies are 'closed'.
Within hours senators are defending the National Security Agency's highly controversial programmes for intercepting, that means bugging of some kind, of emails and phones across the US and the rest of the world.
"There has been an awful lot of (terrorist) chatter, which is very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11," said the Republican senator Saxby Chambliss on NBC's Meet the Press.
"As we come to the end of Ramadan, which is always an interesting time for terrorists, and the upcoming 9/11 anniversary, this is the most serious threat that I have seen in the last several years."
Mr Chambliss said he believed the intelligence had been gathered by the NSA using foreign surveillance powers granted under section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
"This is a good indication of why they (the surveillance powers) are so important," he said.
Another Republican, Lindsey Graham weighed in. The senator said: "It is scary … the NSA programme is proving its worth yet again."
Coming at a time when the NSA is being investigated and pilloried in some quarters for violating the privacy of individuals. And at a time when the NSA has been exposed for spending $100m (£65m) on the UK's GCHQ facility in Cheltenham as part of its programme of global electronic surveillance, the US embassy scares are a Godsend.
Any attack on an American embassy would be extremely difficult. After the 1998 bombing of the Nairobi mission in which hundreds died, American diplomatic buildings closely resemble high value military installations, wrapped in concrete.
Ayman al Zawahiri, the new leader of al Qaeda, last week issued a call to arms and orders to his followers to attack US interests.
His statement was timed to coincide with the jail break of al Qaeda supporters in Iraq, Libya and Pakistan.
Al Qaeda threats are real. They are a tactical nightmare.
They are hard to stop, and take intense amounts of funding to prevent.
But al Qaeda has never posed a strategic threat to any Western nation. It can't disrupt trade, shut down power supplies, or topple governments.
It does, however, affect our lives every day as a consequence of the natural vigilance that sensible precautions against terror would require.
And as a result of legislation like the US Patriot Act and the UK's draft Communications Bill, both of which curtail individual liberties of ordinary citizens in the name of fighting terror.
It may be cynical to suggest that had it not been for the work of the NSA and other electronic surveillance organisations, that a terrible atrocity would not have been avoided.
But no plot is ever unravelled by electronic spying alone.
The focus of the latest operation appears to be the Yemen. The British embassy has closed there and asked all of its citizens to get out of the country.
The last time a major terror attack was foiled which emanated from the Yemen was when printers were loaded with plastic explosives and sent by courier to targets in the US.
They were intercepted in the UK. On information supplied by a Saudi agent. A good old fashioned human spy.
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