Former adviser Berger expects another domestic terrorist attack

Knight Ridder Newspapers | May 11, 2005
BY KEN MCLAUGHLIN

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Two former national security leaders say they are perplexed that suicide bombers have not targeted Americans on U.S. soil.

"The threshold of entry into this business of suicide bombs is not very high," said Sandy Berger, national security adviser in President Clinton's second term. "All you need to do is strap something to you and walk into some place where there are a lot of people. It's a little bit of a mystery to me why that hasn't happened ... given the resentment of the United States in many areas of the world."

Berger appeared Monday night with Robert Gates, a CIA director in the administration of the first President Bush, at the Leon Panetta Lecture Series in Monterey, Calif.

"I too am puzzled by the fact that there haven't been suicide bombers," said Robert Gates, who reportedly declined President George W. Bush's recent offer to be the country's first director of national intelligence. "That's not an invitation, just an observation. We should count ourselves very fortunate."

The comments of Berger and Gates represented only one of many chilling scenarios laid out Monday as they visited the Panetta Institute for Public Policy at California State University-Monterey Bay.

At an afternoon news conference, Berger said he fully expected another major terrorist attack in the United States, in part because not enough money has been spent fighting terrorism on the home front. His statements come at a time when his reputation has been tarnished for removing classified documents from a high-security building.

"We've broken bee hives but not found all the bees," Berger said of the fight against terrorism overseas.

Only 5 percent of cargo containers at U.S. ports are inspected - and chemical plants and other toxic facilities are still not adequately protected, Berger said.

He also chastised the Bush administration for not actively engaging North Korea, which he said would not hesitate to sell nuclear material to terrorists.

"I do not want our children to grow up in a world where Al-Qaida can drop a nuclear bomb" on New York, Berger said.

Both he and Gates were critical of an intelligence apparatus that allowed President Bush to receive false information concluding that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

"Fundamentally, it was just a lousy piece of work," said Gates, now president of Texas A&M University.

Gates blamed the bad intelligence on "groupthink" and field agents and analysts presenting out-of-date information as current.

Berger was a senior adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry during the 2004 campaign. He was widely believed to be in line to become the first secretary of state in a Kerry administration. But Berger resigned his post after it came to light that he had removed sensitive documents involving anti-terrorist policy from the National Archives the year before.

Last month, Berger pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Federal prosecutors are recommending he be fined $10,000 and stripped of his security clearance for three years.

"I've made a mistake and I've taken responsibility for it," Berger said Monday when asked by a reporter if he saw the prosecution as politically motivated. "I'm ready to move on and not cast blame."

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