Analysts Suspect Bin Laden Group
Sept. 12 -- U.S. government officials say they have not yet identified any groups or persons responsible for the terrorist attacks Tuesday, and experts say it could take a great deal of time and effort to determine who might have been involved.
But intelligence analysts suggest the apparently coordinated attacks — against the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington, and the downing of a jet in Pennsylvania — have the mark of Osama bin Laden's network al Qaeda.
"You would think it would have to be bin Laden behind it, because who else would have the audacity, the conceptual audacity of it?" says John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org in Washington.
"His organization fits the profile. There are very few international terrorist organizations with such skill sets capable of launching such a massive and coordinated attack," says Stratfor analyst Jamie Etheridge in Austin, Texas.
"His organization incorporates the tactics used … suicide [attack], coordinated attack," she says. "They probably used trained pilots to ram the World Trade Center."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told ABCNEWS that "top people at the CIA" told him "just about everything points in the direction of Osama bin Laden." Hatch also said U.S. officials had some data suggesting bin Laden associates were on at least one of the aircraft that crashed apparently was brought down today.
Steven Aftergood, an intelligence analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, earlier cautioned: "I would like to forgo guessing. I think the evidence should be collected and should speak for itself.
"I think what can be surmised is this was the work of an exceptionally well-organized and sophisticated group of people and they must have left footprints in one place or another," he adds. "This was not bin Laden operating out of his tent."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in a press briefing today declined to discuss at this time whether bin Laden is suspected.
Thousands of FBI agents are investigating, Their probe will include visits to Boston's Logan and Virginia's Dulles international airports, from which three of the four planes that crashed in apparent hijackings today originated. They will be dissecting passenger lists for clues as to who may have been responsible, and calling relatives of the people on the lists. Agents also are executing search warrants based on the flight manifests.
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