Homegrown terrorists deemed huge threat

WASHINGTON - Radicalized U.S. residents willing to carry out attacks with "little or no warning" have helped create one of the biggest terrorist threats in years, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said yesterday.

"The terrorist threat to the homeland is in many ways at its most heightened state since 9/11," she told a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Al-Qaida affiliates and allies increasingly are trying to recruit Westerners or those with ties to the United States and Europe, Napolitano said. The recruits include Pakistani immigrant Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a bomb in Times Square in May, she said.

U.S. intelligence officials are monitoring the actions of allies such as the Haqqani network, Harakat-ul Jihad Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba and al-Shabaab, which have signaled more of a willingness recently to conduct attacks outside their regions, said Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), chairman of the House committee, called the hearings to explore the threat of Islamic radicalization. "We must confront this threat explicitly and directly," he said.

King said he will hold a hearing next month on the radicalization of U.S. Muslims.

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the panel's ranking Democrat, has said the focus should be expanded to include extreme environmentalists and neo-Nazis.

Napolitano, in her testimony, cited a December intelligence report that said 50 of 88 people involved in 32 terrorism plots related to al-Qaida since Sept. 11 were U.S. citizens.

Intelligence officials have said al-Qaida branches have become more prominent in planning U.S. attacks because the group's leadership in Pakistan has been hurt by U.S.-led attacks.