In responding to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, America has entered into a new type of war, one fought in the shadows.
美國在對紐約和華盛頓遭受恐怖襲擊作出反應(yīng)之時，便進入了一種新型的戰(zhàn)爭，一種在暗中進行的戰(zhàn)爭。
走向隱密
Mark Hosenball, Michael Hirsh and Ron Moreau
馬克·霍森鮑爾 邁克爾·赫什 羅恩·莫羅
It was the usual transatlantic flight: nine hours of fidgeting to get the pillow right, first-run movies flickering1 mutely on small screens, an indigestible flow of starchy food and drinks. Bound for Chicago from Zurich on the morning of May 8, the passengers of Swiss International Air Lines Flight 8 saw nothing amiss. Certainly they didn't know they were on the front lines of a global war being waged under their drooping eyes. But the crew knew it.
那是一次尋常的飛越大西洋的航班：整整9個小時頭不停地在靠墊上移來移去，想枕得舒服些，小屏幕上首輪影片的無聲鏡頭抖動著，多得無法消化的淀粉食物及飲料。5月8日上午，在從蘇黎世飛往芝加哥的客機上，乘坐瑞士國際航空公司第8次航班的乘客沒有絲毫異樣感覺。當然，他們不知道，就在睡眼惺忪之際，自己竟處在了一場正在進行的全球戰(zhàn)爭的第一線。然而，機組人員是知道的。
They had been warned that a major terrorist suspect was scheduled to fly on the plane. And a scattering of very wakeful men in nearby seats knew it: a small squad of FBI agents and a separate team of Swiss Special Forces commandos, all carefully positioned around the suspect, all warily watching his every move. For nine hours.
他們接到警報，一個重要的恐怖分子嫌犯預(yù)定乘坐這架班機。散坐在近旁座位上那些高度警覺的人是知道的：那是一小隊聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局的特工人員和另一隊瑞士特別部隊的突擊隊員，他們被精心安排在嫌犯四周，密切監(jiān)視其一舉一動。整整9個小時。
This airborne stakeout was directed at one Jose Padilla, otherwise known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, a Brooklyn-born street thug now identified by investigators as a would-be Qaeda terrorist. After moving mysteriously for a month from Karachi to Zurich to Cairo and back to Zurich -- the kind of city-hopping we've come to associate with a Qaeda plot -- Padilla was headed back to his homeland to cause havoc, or possibly just scout out a good target, U.S. authorities believe. Padilla was one of the band of foreign terrorists who, as the Taliban fell late last year, had escaped into Pakistan with Abu Zubaydah, a senior deputy to Osama bin Laden. Tipped off by Zubaydah -- who was arrested in Pakistan in late March and has since been relentlessly interrogated in a top-secret location -- authorities had recently connected a fresh pair of very alarming dots: they had pieced Padilla's name together with vague allegations from Zubaydah about a "dirty bomb" plot, possibly aimed at Washington, D.C. Even so, the Feds were lucky. Though Padilla came to their attention back in March, U.S. intelligence officials say they did not realize how dangerous he was until weeks after he took off on his trip, and for more than a month they had no firm fix on his whereabouts. Only a last-minute search of itineraries of thousands of passengers known to be traveling toward the United States had turned up Padilla's name -- less than 48 hours before his flight to Chicago.
這一空中監(jiān)控是針對一個叫何塞·帕迪拉，又名阿卜杜拉·阿勒·穆哈季爾的人，一個布魯克林出生的街頭流氓，調(diào)查人員認定他是潛在的基地組織的恐怖分子。一個月內(nèi)，他詭密地出沒在卡拉奇、蘇黎世、開羅等城市，后又在蘇黎世現(xiàn)身――這種在國際城市間飛來飛去的情況，我們常與基地組織的陰謀聯(lián)系在一起――美國當局相信帕迪拉是要回國制造混亂，也可能僅僅是在尋找襲擊目標。帕迪拉是國外恐怖組織的成員，塔利班去年底垮臺后，他跟隨本·拉登的高級副手阿卜·祖巴伊達竄逃至巴基斯坦。根據(jù)3月底在巴基斯坦被捕，并在一個高度機密的地點受到長時間嚴刑審訊的祖巴伊達提供的情況，當局近來將一組極其驚人的新的情況聯(lián)系在一起：他們將帕迪拉的名字與祖巴伊達含糊提到的一項可能以華盛頓為攻擊目標的臟彈計劃聯(lián)系在一起。即便如此，聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局仍算僥幸。雖然帕迪拉自3月以來就引起了他們的注意，美國情報官員說他們直到他起程之后的幾個星期里才意識到他是多么危險，在一個多月的時間內(nèi)，他們不知道他的確切行蹤。直到在對成千上萬個前往美國的乘客的旅行路線進行最后一刻核查時才找到了帕迪拉的名字――這時離他登上前往芝加哥的班機不到48小時。
FBI bomb and hazardous-materials specialists had been deployed to O'Hare to await Padilla's arrival. But the landing at O'Hare International Airport at 1:30 p.m. was as uneventful as the plane ride. Once in, Padilla was whisked away to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, the high-rise federal prison a few blocks from Ground Zero.
于是聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局炸彈及危險物品專家被派往奧海厄機場等候帕迪拉的到來。不過像整個飛行過程一樣，下午1：30飛機在奧海厄國際機場降落時波瀾不驚。一進汽車，帕迪拉就被風(fēng)馳電掣般地押送至坐落在曼哈頓的大都會拘留中心，即距9·11事件現(xiàn)場僅幾個街區(qū)之遙的高層聯(lián)邦監(jiān)獄。
The story of Padilla's quiet capture is the best evidence yet that the war against Al Qaeda has entered an entirely new phase. If the war began dramatically, with planes crashing into buildings and the Taliban fleeing Afghanistan, it is now mostly underground -- waged by terrorists, spooks, paramilitaries and G-men. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge," Bush told West Point graduates a few weeks ago. Many commentators thought he was talking about pre-emptively striking future foes like Iraq. But Bush was also putting a new emphasis on covert operations, which has raised fresh concerns about civil liberties. How far is America veering toward police-state tactics? "We shouldn't deceive ourselves. This is not a defensive game," says Jack Devine, a former CIA associate deputy operations director. "If we seal our ports, they're going to come across the Rio Grande, or from Canada. The truth is that [with new homeland security] we'll improve defensively by maybe 7 percent or 10 percent. The best hope we have is to go after and destroy the terrorist organization."
帕迪拉被悄悄抓獲是迄今最好的證據(jù)，說明反基地組織的戰(zhàn)爭進入了一個嶄新的階段。如果說戰(zhàn)爭開始時頗具戲劇性，如飛機撞入高樓、塔利班逃離阿富汗，那么現(xiàn)在戰(zhàn)爭主要在地下進行――參與作戰(zhàn)的是恐怖主義分子、間諜、準軍事部隊成員以及聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局人員?！拔覀儽仨毾驍橙税l(fā)起進攻，挫敗其計劃，在最可怕的威脅出現(xiàn)之前就勇敢地面對它們，”幾個星期前布什對西點軍校的畢業(yè)生說。許多評論員認為，他指的是要對伊拉克那樣未來的敵人進行先發(fā)制人的打擊。但布什同時重新強調(diào)秘密行動，這引起了對公民自由權(quán)利的新的關(guān)注。美國將在多大程度上轉(zhuǎn)而采取警察國家的策略？“我們不應(yīng)該自己欺騙自己。這并非防御方針，”前中央情報局行動處副處長杰克·迪瓦恩說?！叭绻覀兎怄i港口，他們可以從格蘭德河，或加拿大進入。事實是，（有了新成立的國土安全局）我們的防御能力也許會提高7%到10%。我們最好的希望還是主動追逐并摧毀恐怖組織?！?/div>
What was Padilla's real plan, and how far along was it? Perhaps the endless interrogation he is now undergoing will tell. What American officials at O'Hare didn't do -- but were tempted to -- was to tail Padilla once he landed to see whom he was meeting. Nervous after a torrent of criticism over other lost suspects -- principally the hijackers of September 11 -- the FBI decided he was too dangerous to take a chance with. As a result, U.S. officials say, they simply do not know whether Padilla was a lone wolf, or had a network of confederates in America. And if there is a nationwide manhunt for any accomplices, that, too, is taking place off the radar. All of which points up the main problem with conducting a secret war: it's difficult to tell who's winning.
帕迪拉的真正計劃是什么，這個計劃已經(jīng)執(zhí)行到什么程度？他正在接受的沒完沒了的審訊或許會告訴我們。奧海厄機場的美國官員沒有做――但很想一試--的是，帕迪拉一下飛機就跟蹤他，看他與誰接頭。然而，由于因其他嫌犯成功逃逸――主要指那些9·11的劫機者――而受到一連串批評的聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局，這時已十分緊張，認定帕迪拉太危險，不愿再冒丟失的風(fēng)險。美國官員說，結(jié)果，他們根本不知道帕迪拉到底是單槍匹馬，還是在美國有一伙同黨。如果在全國搜查同黨的話，那也無異于大海撈針。這一切都突出地反映了進行秘密戰(zhàn)爭的主要難題：勝負難定。
Sometimes not even the Feds know what the tally is -- which doesn't bode well for the new spirit of intelligence cooperation in Washington. Just before Padilla's flight, some American intelligence officials back in Washington became alarmed when they noticed that an abnormally large number of Swiss and U.S. passengers had booked last-minute passage on the same plane: it took a while for word to get through to the analysts that the last-minute passengers were the Swiss and FBI teams tailing the suspect. Even the White House, Pentagon and Justice Department couldn't seem to agree on what kind of threat Padilla posed. When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced portentously that Padilla was plotting a radiological bomb attack, White House officials scoffed privately; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz countered that the "plot" was mostly still talk.
有時連聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局調(diào)查員也不知道目標在何處，這對華盛頓情報合作的新精神而言并非好的預(yù)兆。就在帕迪拉搭乘的班機起飛前，華盛頓的一些美國情報官員非常震驚，因為他們注意到，一大批瑞士及美國乘客在起飛前最后一刻訂了同一次航班的票：過了一些時間這些分析家才接到消息，這些臨時乘客正是跟蹤嫌犯的瑞士和聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局工作小組。甚至連白宮、五角大樓和司法部也對帕迪拉究竟會構(gòu)成什么威脅存在意見分歧。當司法部長約翰·阿什克勞夫特矜持地宣布帕迪拉正在策劃放射性炸彈襲擊時，白宮的官員在私下里嗤之以鼻；副國防部長保羅·沃爾福威茨反駁說，所謂“策劃”主要的還只是傳聞。
There are other worrisome signs that terror could prove more slippery even than U.S. tactics to contain it. Late last week FBI agents were running down a warning from Canadian intelligence that Qaeda operatives might be targeting the G8 summit in Canada later this month. Last Friday, at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, the fortified building's guardhouse was struck by a car bomb that killed at least 11 people. The attack was strikingly similar to a suspected Qaeda strike on a Pakistani naval bus in May, which slaughtered 14 people, including 11 French naval technicians. The surviving suspects slipped away. Despite a crackdown in Pakistan, its cities remain hosts and seedbeds for radicals. And while terrorists no longer have a haven in Afghanistan, they're now forming what one intelligence official calls "virtual training camps" on the Web. For the last two months, individuals in a U.S.-based Internet chat room have been frantically conversing, clearly wanting and planning to attack the United States, law-enforcement authorities say. At least one chat-room participant was asked if he could speak Spanish, since terrorist recruiters are looking for Arabs or other Muslims who "look Latin" and speak Spanish "to infiltrate44 the U.S."All we can be sure of today is that they have one fewer recruit in Jose Padilla.
其他令人不安的跡象表明，恐怖活動可能比美國戰(zhàn)術(shù)所能遏制的要棘手。上周晚些時候，聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局特工在追查來自加拿大情報部門的一個警報，基地活動分子可能要襲擊本月下旬在加拿大舉行的八國峰會。上周五，在卡拉奇的美國領(lǐng)事館，設(shè)防的大樓警衛(wèi)隊隊部遭受汽車炸彈的襲擊，造成至少11人死亡。這次襲擊與5月份時懷疑是基地組織發(fā)起的對巴基斯坦一輛海軍汽車的襲擊有著驚人的相似之處，那次襲擊造成14人死亡，包括11名法國海軍技術(shù)人員。尚活著的疑犯溜走了。盡管在巴基斯坦開展了打擊活動，各城市仍活躍著并產(chǎn)生出狂熱分子。在阿富汗，恐怖主義者的確不再擁有庇護所，但現(xiàn)在他們在因特網(wǎng)上組織一位情報官員所謂的“虛擬培訓(xùn)營”。執(zhí)法當局說，在最近兩個月，美國一個因特網(wǎng)聊天室的參與者一直在發(fā)狂似地交談，很明顯要計劃襲擊美國。至少有一個參與聊天的人被問到會不會說西班牙語，因為招募恐怖分子的人在找長得像南美人、會說西班牙語的阿拉伯人或其他穆斯林，以便讓他們“滲入美國”。今天我們所能肯定的僅僅是，他們損失了一個新成員何塞·帕迪拉。
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