Al Qaeda Affiliates Pose New Dangers; Big Security Breaches At Two Airports
WHITFIELD: The U.S. State Department said this week it's giving weapons and drones to Iraq to help the country fight a growing threat from al Qaeda. The terror group may have taken a hit in 2011 when Osama Bin Laden was killed but now experts say it's getting even stronger. Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr has more.</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): CNN has learned recent intercepts of messages from senior al Qaeda operatives in Yemen are renewing concern the group is planning new attacks. The intercepts don't indicate specific targets, but are described by one source as, quote, "active plotting."</s>SETH JONES, RAND CORPORATION: There are multiple indications that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is plotting attacks both within Yemen against the U.S. and other western structures as well as overseas.</s>STARR: The group in Yemen already well known for the failed underwear bomber attempt to bring down an airplane Christmas day 2009. Four years later the U.S. intelligence community believes it poses the greatest threat of an attack on the</s>U.S. JONES: They're still capable of conducting attacks outside of Yemen including plotting attacks against the United States in multiple locations including trying to conduct attacks against the U.S. homeland especially by taking down aircraft.</s>STARR: Analysts say the group rebounded in 2013 from battlefield losses. U.S. drone strikes have had mixed results. A drone attack this month failed to kill an al Qaeda planner believed to be behind a plot to attack the U.S. Embassy. Yemen says more than a dozen members of a wedding party were killed in that attack. Yemen's al Qaeda leader also advising al Qaeda fighters across the region and those al Qaeda affiliates from Yemen to Syria, Iraq and Libya are growing stronger. The threat they pose worries key members of Congress.</s>CANDY CROWLEY, HOST, CNN'S "STATE OF THE UNION": Are we safer now than we were a year ago, two years ago?</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think so.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I absolutely agree that we're not safer today.</s>STARR: In Iraq, police are trying to crack down, but al Qaeda openly operates training camps near the Syrian border. And from there, al Qaeda has moved into Syria with weapons and tactics learned during the U.S. war in Iraq. Inside Syria, a key al Qaeda affiliate also stronger than a year ago. About 100 Americans along with potentially hundreds from Europe are fighting alongside thousands of militants.</s>JONES: If they were able to return to Europe and to get access to the United States or return directly to the United States, they were not put on any watch list, they would pose a very serious threat. They're well trained, radicalized and they have the ability and the intent to strike the U.S. homeland.</s>STARR: Analysts say the rise of the new al Qaeda affiliate is part of the price paid for years of attacks against the old core al Qaeda. Many of those leaders are long gone including Osama Bin Laden. And now the new affiliates have much more autonomy, much more freedom to operate as they see fit. Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.</s>WHITFIELD: And then there's this, two airport breaches on Christmas Day, now raising a whole lot of questions. The breaches happened at two airports on opposite ends of the country. A Newark Airport in New Jersey and in women's clothing scaled a fence and walked on to two runways. At Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, workers say they saw a man climb over barbed wire then run right on to the tarmac. Alexandra Field takes a look at security at both airports.</s>FIELD (voice-over): A $100 million have been spent on securing the perimeters of all New York area airports, but it wasn't enough to stop one intruder from getting on to the runway at Newark Liberty International. Two officials say the suspect was coming from the New Jersey turnpike and jumped the airport's security fence. He made his way across two runways before reaching Gate 70 at Terminal C where an airline employee stopped him. (on camera): Police arrested him and charged him with trespassing. They say the 24-year-old Jersey City man was wearing women's clothes and that he told them he had been in someone's car when he got spoofed and ran off. Official say planes were never in danger, but the whole episode raises questions about the airport's expensive security system.</s>JEFF PRICE AVIATION MANAGEMENT PROFESSOR, MSU: When the system is working and working effectively, it becomes a good layer of security, an additional layer and a layer that goes above the regulatory standards.</s>FIELD (voice-over): The multimillion-dollar question, how did the suspect get through a gate without getting stopped? The system includes radar, motion detecting cameras and other technology. It is meant to signal police when the perimeter is breached. The same system came under fire in 2012 at New York's JFK Airport when a jet skier who ran out of fuel was able to climb out of the water and on to the tarmac again undetected. The New York-New Jersey Port Authority put out a statement saying, quote, "The preliminary investigation indicates the airport's perimeter intrusion detection system worked properly during the incident." The statement goes on to say, investigators are questioning employees, quote, "to determine why it took an unacceptably long time to locate the suspect."</s>GLENN WINN, FORMER SECURITY DIRECTOR, UNITED AIRLINES: It is very disturbing because you have this system that has been installed and tested over the last several years and there continue to be different breaches at the different airports in the port authority jurisdiction.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, and then there's some pretty extreme weather out there, ice, tornadoes, even typhoons, we've seen a lot of wicked weather this year. Which one's made it to our top test list next?