FBI's Mueller Wonders if a Mumbai-Style Attack Could Hit U.S. Cities

The terrorist attacks that shook Mumbai last November raised questions on whether cash-strapped but ambitious terrorists could create similar carnage in the United States, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III, told the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday.

"This type of attack reminds us that terrorists with large agendas and little money can use rudimentary weapons to maximize their impact," he said. "And it again raises the question of whether a similar attack could happen in Seattle or San Francisco, Miami or Manhattan."

The commando-style assault on Mumbai by ten terrorists spanned 60 hours, killed more than 170, and wounded more than 300 more.

Mueller noted the FBI had already stopped a somewhat similar attack to Mumbai by six men who planned to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey with semi-automatic weapons. Five of the men were convicted in federal court of conspiring to kill military personnel in December while the sixth pled guilty to gun offenses.

"Like the Mumbai attackers, these men wanted to inflict as much damage as they could," he said.

But what really worries Mueller is how conflicts halfway around the world can unforeseenly reverberate back here at home.

Last October, he told the audience, a young resident of Minneapolis traveled back to his homeland of Somalia and blew himself up in what the FBI believes is the first instance where a naturalized American citizen became a suicide bomber. He killed 29 others.

According to CNN, that man was 27-year-old Shirwa Ahmed.

Mueller called Ahmed's journey from Somalia to America and back to Somalia as "a perversion of the immigrant story."

"For these parents to leave a war-torn country only to find that their children have been convinced to return to that way of life is heartbreaking," he added.

What's worrisome for the FBI is that Ahmed and others like him have been radicalized in their own communities and persuaded to travel to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations to wage jihad. But what's even worse is the fear that these battle-hardened militants will one day come back home to show the United States what they have learned.

The only way for law enforcement to identify these individuals, Mueller said, is to establish good relations with ethnic communities that may come from countries where police and security forces are blunt objects of repression, rather than of safety and security.

"Oftentimes, the communities from which we need the most help are those who trust us the least," he said. "But it is in these communities that we must re-double our efforts."