WASHINGTON: Islamic radicals from Iraq and Afghanistan planned a terrorist attack on a US intelligence center that trains military interrogators for Guantanamo Bay and other detention centers, The Washington Times reported Monday.
Citing confidential law enforcement documents, the newpaper said the plot targeted Fort Huachuca, an Army base located next to the Arizona town of Sierra Vista, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of the US-Mexican boder.
Last May, the base was forced to beef up security measures after commanders were warned that possibly as many as 60 Afghan and Iraqi radicals had been smuggled into the United States through underground tunnels built and manned by Mexican drug cartels, the report said.
The documents said the radicals had high-powered weapons to attack the base, the Times said. A Federal Bureau of Investigation advisory said some of the operatives had been already smuggled into the United States, while the rest remained outside the country.
Each Middle Easterner paid Mexican cartels 20,000 dollars "or the equivalent in weapons" for assistance in smuggling them through tunnels that the cartel control along the US-Mexican border, the newspaper said, citing the FBI advisory.
Many of these tunnels begin in northern Mexico and end in warehouses in Laredo, Texas, and in Arizona.
The report quotes Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Garner, a spokesman for Fort Huachuca, as saying that details about the investigation or security changes at the base "will not be disclosed."
"We are always taking precautions to ensure that soldiers, family members and civilians that work and live on Fort Huachuca are safe," Garner said, according to the report. "With this specific threat we did change some aspects of our security that we did have in place."
Fort Huachuca is home to the US Army Intelligence Center as well as the 111th Military Intelligence Brigade, which trains intelligence specialists for all branches of the military.
According to published reports, most of the intelligence specialists who work at the war-on-terror dentention center at the US Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or the ill-fated Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq received their training at Fort Huachuca.
