SpyTalk

Speaking at his high school alma mater in Greenville, S.C., Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell claimed Sunday that "dozens" of terrorist plots against the U.S. have been thwarted since 9/11.

Privately, many serious analysts of terrorist threats, both in and outside of U.S. spy agencies, question whether the figure is exaggerated -- while at the same time confirming that al Qaeda-associated terrorists continue to pose  a mortal threat to the U.S. homeland.

"As we are today - post 9/11 - just some seven short years ago, we have not suffered a similar attack. That is not because people aren't trying," said McConnell in a speech during his induction into Wade Hampton High School's "Legion of Honor," a roster of distinguished graduates. 

"My community and the community of military, and law enforcement, and intelligence officials around the globe are working every day to prevent another attack on the United States. And we have been successful dozens of times."

Responding to a request for clarification, a spokesperson for McConnell today cited four documents, including a Justice Department report on counterterrorism issued on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. 

The report listed eight "notable" prosecutions, but suggested other plots had been disrupted by covert counterterrorism operations that did not -- or may not have been intended to -- result in arrests.

"In each of these cases, the Department has faced critical decisions on when to bring criminal charges, given that a decision to prosecute a suspect exposes the government's interest in that person and effectively ends covert intelligence investigation," it said.

Such determinations require the careful balancing of competing interests, including the immediate incapacitation of a suspect and disruption of terrorist activities through prosecution, on the one hand; and the continuation of intelligence collection about the suspect's plans, capabilities, and confederates, on the other; as well as the inherent risk that a suspect could carry out a violent act while investigators and prosecutors attempt to perfect their evidence.

An FBI spokesman declined to comment, beyond referring me to past reports on terrorist plots, including one which cited 24 incidents between 2002 and 2005 that included attacks by animal rights and white supremacist groups

A White House Fact Sheet released in Oct. 2005 named "10 plots" that had been disrupted and five "casings and infiltrations" that were either detected or disrupted.  

Such figures suggest that at least two dozen more plots had to have been thwarted in the past three years to reach McConnell's "dozens"  threshold.

A recently retired senior CIA counterterrorism officer expressed skepticism about McConnell's figure, saying it came down to "word games."

Perhaps a half dozen "serious" terrorist plots against the U.S. homeland had been disrupted by Western intelligence, he said on condition of anonymity, because the information is classified, such as the 2006 London-based plot to sabotage nine commercial airliners en route to the United States. 

But he was skeptical of McConnell's claim that "dozens" of attacks had been thwarted.

"I suppose every time they arrest a guy who had an idea for an attack and put him in jail they can claim they 'stopped an attack'," he said. 

"After all, the FBI arrested some guys and charged them with conspiracy to blow up the Sears Tower, and the closest they ever got to doing anything was driving around the building with a video camera - which the FBI gave them."

But author Ronald Kessler, a longtime intelligence specialist with close contacts in the spy agencies and White House, made the same "dozens" claim as McConnell in a recent book, "The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack." 

Responding to a query Monday, Kessler cited the White House and Justice Department reports and expressed a weariness about questioning "what was a real planned attack."

"If something was not blown up, it was not a real attack," according to critics, Kessler said.

"Many more have been rolled up since then. Beyond that, because the FBI and CIA have rolled up more than 5,000 terrorists worldwide since 9/11, most of the attacks were never hatched in the first place," he said.