HOUSTON - A 100-member Houston task force including federal, state and local law enforcement officials has investigated thousands of tips on possible terrorist activity.
While most of the leads don't have serious consequences, one tip helped Houston's Joint Terrorism Task Force thwart attempts by suspected terrorists to cross the Mexican border into Texas, Assistant U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez said.
Houston is viewed as one of eight U.S. cities most vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack, said Martinez, who is a task force member. Officials are concerned, for example, that terrorists targeting the petrochemical industry, NASA's Johnson Space Center or the George Bush Intercontinental Airport could enter through the porous Gulf of Mexico coastline.
''It is the only area in the U.S. with critical infrastructure in all risk categories,'' Martinez was quoted as saying in Sunday's edition of the Houston Chronicle.
Houston's task force, created a few weeks before the first World Trade Center Bombing in 1993, was the first in the state and one of the few in the nation already in place before the Sept. 11 attacks. There are now 70 terrorism task forces nationwide, including ones in Dallas, San Antonio and El Paso.
''It's only a matter of when terrorists will strike again, not if they will,'' Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Porto said.
Task force members said they believe they have prevented attacks from happening.
A few days after the start of the war in Iraq, task force members heard that five Iraqis in Mexico City wanted to exchange millions of dinars for U.S. currency and find a smuggler to bring them across the border near Laredo, officials said.
They were believed to be planning an assault on President Bush's Crawford ranch, where they ''wanted to blow something up,'' said Porto, who also is a task force member.
The smuggler they approached sought help from two people with links to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, which has been named a foreign terrorist organization, Martinez said.
''The threat was interrupted and went away,'' he said. ''I can't say how.''
Another tip triggered a task force investigation of a convenience store owner in Alice, Texas, who was seeking explosives and collecting photos of tall buildings.
Muhammad Navid Asrar is now in federal prison after pleading guilty to being an undocumented immigrant in illegal possession of 50 rounds of 9 mm bullets, records show.
Asrar, a Pakistani who overstayed his student visa, denied any connection to terrorists, and investigators said they could not prove what he intended to do with the photographs. But he remains under investigation, FBI agent David Troutman has testified.
Each investigation teaches task force members lessons that will help them be more effective, authorities said.
''We can't guarantee nothing will ever happen again,'' said Richard Powers, the FBI agent in charge of the Houston task force. ''But we are in better shape. We have the national will, dedication and focus.''
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