Bush faces attack warnings backlash

George Bush's presidency is facing a public opinion backlash over a new round of warnings of a terrorist attack that are "vague and unhelpful".

US Vice President Dick Cheney has said that another terrorist attack was certain "whether this year, or next year, or after that - but it will happen."

Senior members of Congress are using his series of warnings on TV as fodder for their censure of the US intelligence agencies, especially the FBI and the CIA.

They are accused of inferior information gathering which, by lacking specifics, tends to be dismissed by a public growing sceptical of the government's ability to penetrate al Qaeda. They are particularly incensed by the Vice President's remark that all the government can do is "read the tea leaves".

In two interviews over the weekend, Mr Cheney confirmed that US intelligence is picking up hints that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network may be planning an attack. The information is vague, he conceded, but he insisted it must be taken seriously.

Mr Cheney said the allies have been successful in disrupting the al Qaeda network but he warned that it is impossible to create a perfect system of protection for Americans. He said: "You try to read the tea leaves. We look for pieces of information but you never get the complete picture."

Robert Fox writes: In London, Colonel Randall Larsen, Director of the US ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute: "We are facing an emerging threat from new weapons. If the 20th century was the century of weapons, blasts and fragmentation, the 21st century is the century of cyber and biological weapons."

He said a number of recent exercises have simulated biological attacks on commercial centres and said: "A small phial of a bacillus related to anthrax could have killed 10,000 in the World Trade Center."

Security experts in Britain think US intelligence agencies may have been distracted from the activities of the hijackers preparing for 11 September by the possibility of imminent biological attack.

With 500 new laws and regulations on US domestic security over the past six months, Col Larsen said America still does not have the powers needed to prepare a proper defence against biological attacks and cyber hackers. He pointed out that two students in the Philippines had caused huge damage with the 'I love you' computer virus. "If two drop-out kids can do that - imagine what 1,000 well trained computer scientists could do."

He said defending America against biological attacks was just as difficult because of the 7,500 miles of frontier shared by the US with Mexico and Canada.