WASHINGTON — More than a month ago, the FBI announced it would launch a wave of interviews across the country as part of an urgent effort to root out a suspected terrorist attack planned for the U.S. this summer.
Preparations for the attack were 90% complete, U.S. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said at the time. Preparations for the interviews are another story. It's already July, and the FBI is still weeks away from launching the initiative, law enforcement officials confirm.
The interviews were included in a series of measures that the Justice Department and FBI announced at a May 26 news conference, calling attention to what Ashcroft said was "credible intelligence from multiple sources" that terrorists planned to hit the U.S. "hard" this summer.
An FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the delay shows that FBI officials are being meticulous in deciding whom they want to interview. A similar effort that focused on Muslim neighborhoods before the war in Iraq last year drew complaints of racial profiling.
But the delay also is bolstering a perception that Ashcroft's warning -- which included poster-size photos of suspects, most of whom had been previously identified -- was a public relations exercise that sent mixed signals to citizens, including Arab Americans.
Ashcroft "has attempted to use scare tactics to promote his agenda, and I think it has been a real failure," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, a Washington advocacy group. "He has done this before. Each time he has done it, people keep asking afterward, 'What was this all about?' "
The warning was not accompanied by any increase in the national terrorism threat level, which is administered by the Department of Homeland Security. Others complained that the assessment was based on intelligence that, while serious and real, had been known to federal agents for months.
And there was speculation from critics that the news conference was a calculated effort by the Bush administration to divert attention from its woes in Iraq. The episode fits a pattern, they say, and shows how Ashcroft's aggressive style can paradoxically undermine the message he is trying to convey.
"The entire thrust of the counterterrorism effort in terms of law enforcement and intelligence-gathering has been a series of glamorous press announcements or political speeches," said Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department official in the Clinton administration and the current director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. "It is a miasma of confusion."
