Homeland Security Chief on Threats - Real and Hyped

By James Gordon Meek

On the fifth anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security, its second leader, Michael Chertoff, talked to me about his deepest fears about terrorist threats and why he frets over Europe and Canada more than Mexico. In the interview published Sunday in the New York Daily News, the secretary of Homeland Security said "more than a dozen" people linked to Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and other extremists have tried to enter the U.S. through ports of entry on the northern border, he said, while there have been almost no such attempts at U.S.-Mexico checkpoints.

Aboard his sleek Gulfstream V jet (callsign "Coast Guard One"), Chertoff also discussed America's growing complacency toward terror threats, why racial profiling at airports is "foolish" and explained how terror plots get hyped by some in the government.

The former prosecutor and judge often thrust into the political debate over illegal immigration denied that the Mexican border has been an easy way for Al Qaeda to penetrate the U.S.

"When we've had instances - and there have not been many - where we’ve caught terrorists trying to sneak in, it's been through ports of entry using false documents, and I think we’ve been more concerned about Canada as a platform than Mexico," he said.

Chertoff said "much more than a dozen" stopped at the Canadian border since the 9/11 attacks were connected to "a mix" of terror groups through "either a financial connection, maybe a family connection, maybe communications."

"I don't mean that they swore bayat to [Osama] Bin Laden, but [the link to terrorism was] something I would consider to be Al Qaeda-related," he explained.

Beyond America's land borders, Chertoff has made a point lately of warning that Europe is "what worries me the most."

The News reported late last year that counterterror officials were concerned about intelligence indicating a small number of white, Anglo-looking Europeans had joined Al Qaeda and received training in Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan - which Chertoff says is precisely why racial profiling "would be foolish."

"The enemy quite consciously tries to recruit people … who don't fit a particular image of what a terrorist looks like," he said. Officials are deeply alarmed by evidence "that Al Qaeda is recruiting Europeans who have clean papers and training them and sending them back, either to attack Europe or take advantage of the Visa Waiver Program and attack us."

"We're concerned about people who are European, or at least have European backgrounds, who are able to move around, that don't have a record and would fit in with local society and therefore are less likely to make a mistake that might call attention to them," he continued.

Security in airports tightened around travelers like a boa constrictor after a 2006 Al Qaeda plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners from London was disrupted. Security officials subsequently banned bottles of hairspray and other liquids, while some have noted that liquid explosives were in Al Qaeda's playbook going back 13 years, when terrorist Ramzi Yousef killed a Japanese businessman with a bomb aboard an airliner in a dry run for the "Bojinka" plot.

"We were looking for liquid explosives, but we had not gotten to the point where we were prepared to take as drastic a step as we took after London," Chertoff said in defense of his agency. "The London plot clearly put us over the edge… that was, to my mind, comparable to a potential 9/11."

Chertoff has often complained that Americans are growing complacent about terrorism, and - surprisingly - he was even willing to entertain the idea that their complacency might owe in part to the perception that the government hypes arrests of clumsy "mopes" from terrorism's back bench.

"I don't think I've actually ever hyped anything. I think some of the hype does come through inexperience rather than politics," Chertoff said. "Sometimes when prosecutors get in front of the press - particularly when they don't have a lot of experience - they get caught up in the whole media environment and they start to feel an obligation to give the media something really good to kind of satisfy them."

But, he added, "Sometimes people who are mopes can do a lot of damage - even the B-team."

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