The Capitol Hill Terror Attack That Never Came

A leading House Democrat has charged that congressional Republicans promoted "bogus" intelligence about a reputed terror threat on Capitol Hill last summer, inflaming debate over the Bush administration's proposal to dramatically expand the U.S. government's electronic surveillance powers.

Rep. Jane Harman, who chairs a key homeland-security subcommittee, has provided new details this week about an alarming intel report in August that warned of a possible Al Qaeda attack on the Capitol. The report, which was quickly discredited, was circulated on Capitol Hill at a critical moment: just as the administration was mounting a major push for a new surveillance law that would permit the U.S. intelligence community to intercept suspected terrorist communications without seeking approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

In the days before the vote on the surveillance bill in early August, the U.S. Capitol Police suddenly stepped up security procedures, and one top Republican senator, Trent Lott, seemed to allude to the report when he claimed that "disaster could be on our doorstep" if the Congress didn't immediately act. Inside the Congress, "there was a buzz about this," Harman told NEWSWEEK. "There was an orchestrated campaign to basically gut FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act], and this piece of uncorroborated intelligence was used as part of it."

In fact, the intel report that provoked the concern was never publicly cited by the Bush administration in the run up to the surveillance bill—and was clearly labeled as unreliable when it was first passed to the U.S. Capitol police over the summer. The report lacked any specifics and was based on a foreign intelligence source U.S. officials did not view to be credible. (A written summary of the report, which made clear its limits, was also provided to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.) But the alleged misuse of the information by some members of Congress illustrates the perils of one of the major changes instituted after the September 11 attacks: a commitment by U.S. intelligence officials to share with state and local law-enforcement agencies all reports about prospective terror threats in their communities no matter how vague and unreliable.

"This stuff falls under the category of, 'somebody, somewhere, some day is going to do something,' said a congressional aide who works on intelligence issues but who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive information. In the past, many law-enforcement and intelligence professionals viewed it as irresponsible and unduly alarmist to pass along such uncorroborated reports. But now they are routinely shared—lest federal officials are later accused of "holding back" information that might have saved lives.

Harman's charge—first made last week at a forum sponsored by the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress—has stoked the ongoing debate about whether to pass a new and more extensive version of the surveillance law in the next few months. Concerns about a "heightened threat environment"—and fears that they might get blamed if there was a terrorist attack—led Democrats in Congress to reluctantly approve a six-month version of the proposal, dubbed the "Protect America Act," which President Bush signed into law on Aug. 5.