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Al Qaeda Plotting Cyber Attack on U.S. Banking

By Jon Scott, FOXNews Live

December 1, 2005

Tim Roemer: (transcript interrupted)…Bin Laden’s statements. One made right after September 11th about December 2001 he says he wants to hit the economy of the United States and bring that economy to its knees. And secondly, the last time we saw bin Laden was before the presidential election when he was on video tape and again he said this is not just a military war it is an economic war and 'I want to make the Americans bleed,' and he talked about the deficit.

The last thing, Jon, is that Jihad.com is what Al Qaeda would like to turn into.  They’re more and more of a network while the United States is more and more of a burgeoning bureaucracy.

We have to pass the 9/11 reforms that are going to be taken up by the new Congress so that we can reorganize our government and get in better shape so that these cyber attacks, which al Qaeda would like to do in the future, so that we have more protections against them and we are more poised in the 21st century to take on this more dynamic threat.

Jon Scott: We know that he thought he was going to do major damage to the American economy by bringing down the twin towers. Is the idea of a cyber attack more realistic than just knocking down a sky scraper?

Roemer: I think that when you read again what Osama bin Laden says and what he intends you have to pay attention to it. When he says he wants to get our troops out of the holy peninsula, he’s done it. When he says he wants to get the U.S. into a war in the Middle East, he’s done it. When he says he wants to hit our economy, to make us bleed. He talks in detail about emergency supplementals that were spending money on for the war, how much this war is costing us. How much does it cost al Qaeda? One dollar for every one million dollars that the United States would spend. He sees this in political and economic terms.

Scott: But again in terms of the reality of this thread, it would seem that the technological expertise in this country, and because of the diversification of websites and records and so forth that was undertaken after 9/11, you’re not going to see the kind of damage that al Qaeda hopes to do through a cyber attack.

Roemer: Well, what we’ve seen and what I think what your reporter accurately talked about in the previous segment is that this is more of an aspirational threat. It is a live threat for all of December. The Homeland security spokesperson said that there is not evidence to corroborate that they could pull this off operationally at this point. But I think you’re going to see in the future this kind of cyber attack as well as more output from the production company that al Qaeda has developed, al Sahab--where they have production quality studios to put out their videos now.

They’ve put out--bin Laden and Zawahiri have put out--twelve or thirteen videos and communications in the last year. They’re going to do more and more to communicate with the hearts and minds of people around the world. They’re going to focus more on cyber attacks, they’re going to look to make this kind of attack that they’re threatening more operational in nature in the future. And I think that this is something that the United States has to spend more attention planning for and trying to prevent. 

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