WASHINGTON (AP) — The intelligence linking Syrian President Bashar Assad or his inner circle to an alleged chemical weapons attack that killed at least 100 people is no "slam dunk," with questions remaining about who actually controls some of Syria's chemical weapons stores and doubts about whether Assad himself ordered the strike, U.S. intelligence officials say.

President Barack Obama declared unequivocally Wednesday that the Syrian government was responsible, while laying the groundwork for an expected U.S. military strike.

"We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried these out," Obama said in an interview with "NewsHour" on PBS. "And if that's so, then there need to be international consequences."

However, multiple U.S. officials used the phrase "not a slam dunk" to describe the intelligence picture — a reference to then-CIA Director George Tenet's insistence in 2002 that U.S. intelligence showing Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk" — intelligence that turned out to be wrong.

A report by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence outlining that evidence against Syria is thick with caveats. It builds a case that Assad's forces are most likely responsible while outlining gaps in the U.S. intelligence picture. Relevant congressional committees were to be briefed on that evidence by teleconference call on Thursday, U.S. officials and congressional aides said.

The complicated intelligence picture raises questions about the White House's full-steam-ahead approach to the Aug. 21 attack on a rebel-held Damascus suburb, with worries that the attack could be tied to al-Qaida-backed rebels later. Administration officials said Wednesday that neither the U.N. Security Council, which is deciding whether to weigh in, or allies' concerns would affect their plans.

Intelligence officials say they could not pinpoint the exact locations of Assad's supplies of chemical weapons, and Assad could have moved them in recent days as U.S. rhetoric builds. That lack of certainty means a possible series of U.S. cruise missile strikes aimed at crippling Assad's military infrastructure could hit newly hidden supplies of chemical weapons, accidentally triggering a deadly chemical attack.

Over the past six months, with shifting front lines in the 2½-year-old civil war and sketchy satellite and human intelligence coming out of Syria, U.S. and allied spies have lost track of who controls some of the country's chemical weapons supplies, according to one senior U.S. intelligence official and three other U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence shared by the White House as reason to strike Syria's military complex. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the Syrian issue publicly.

U.S. satellites have captured images of Syrian troops moving trucks into weapons storage areas and removing materials, but U.S. analysts have not been able to track what was moved or, in some cases, where it was relocated. They are also not certain that when they saw what looked like Assad's forces moving chemical supplies, those forces were able to remove everything before rebels took over an area where weapons had been stored.

In addition, an intercept of Syrian military officials discussing the strike was among low-level staff, with no direct evidence tying the attack back to an Assad insider or even a senior Syrian commander, the officials said.

So while Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that links between the attack and the Assad government are "undeniable," U.S. intelligence officials are not so certain that the suspected chemical attack was carried out on Assad's orders, or even completely sure it was carried out by government forces, the officials said.

Ideally, the White House seeks intelligence that links the attack directly to Assad or someone in his inner circle to rule out the possibility that a rogue element of the military decided to use chemical weapons without Assad's authorization. Another possibility that officials would hope to rule out: that stocks had fallen out of the government's control and were deployed by rebels in a callous and calculated attempt to draw the West into the war.

The U.S. has devoted only a few hundred operatives, between intelligence officers and soldiers, to the Syrian mission, with CIA and Pentagon resources already stretched by the counterterrorism missions in Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, as well as the continuing missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said.

The quest for added intelligence to bolster the White House's case for a strike against Assad's military infrastructure was the issue that delayed the release of the U.S. intelligence community's report, which had been expected Tuesday.

The uncertainty calls into question the statements by Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden.

"We know that the Syrian regime maintains custody of these chemical weapons," Kerry said. "We know that the Syrian regime has the capacity to do this with rockets. We know that the regime has been determined to clear the opposition from those very places where the attacks took place."

On Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said it didn't really matter whether the administration knew those details with total certainty.

"We ultimately, of course, hold President Assad responsible for the use of chemical weapons by his regime against his own people, regardless of where the command and control lies," Harf said.

The CIA, the Pentagon and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Still, many U.S. lawmakers believe there is reasonable certainty Assad's government was responsible and are pressing the White House to go ahead with an armed response.

"Based on available intelligence, there can be no doubt the Assad regime is responsible for using chemical weapons on the Syrian people," said Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Short of putting troops on the ground, I believe a meaningful military response is appropriate."

Others, both Democrats and Republicans, have expressed serious concern with the expected military strike.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Wednesday that all the evidence points in one direction.

"There is no evidence that any opposition group in Syria has the capability let alone the desire to launch such a large-scale chemical attack," Hague told British broadcaster Sky News.

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron has recalled Parliament to debate the issue Thursday.

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Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper, Julie Pace and Lara Jakes contributed to this report.

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Follow Dozier on Twitter: http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier

and Apuzzo at http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo

President Barack Obama promised Wednesday that any U.S. military strike at Syria would be a “shot across the bow” that avoids seeing America pulled into “any kind of open-ended conflict.”

Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with PBS Newshour, Obama insisted he has not made a decision on how best to respond to the alleged massacre of civilians by forces loyal to Syrian strongman Bashar Assad using chemical weapons.

But “if, in fact, we can take limited, tailored approaches, not getting drawn into a long conflict — not a repetition of, you know, Iraq, which I know a lot of people are worried about — but if we are saying in a clear and decisive but very limited way, we send a shot across the bow saying, stop doing this, that can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term,” the president said.

That would send the Assad regime “a pretty strong signal, that in fact, it better not do it again."

“We have concluded that the Syrian government in fact carried these out. And if that’s so, then there need to be international consequences,” he said.

“I have no interest in any kind of open-ended conflict in Syria, but we do have to make sure that when countries break international norms on weapons like chemical weapons that could threaten us, that they are held accountable,” he said.

Obama said the use of chemical weapons threatens “not only international norms but also America’s core self-interest,” pointing to allies such as Turkey, Jordan and Israel that neighbor Syria and noting the presence of U.S. military bases in the region.

“We cannot see a breach of the nonproliferation norm that allows, potentially, chemical weapons to fall into the hands of all kinds of folks,” he said, warning that Syria's civil war could ultimately "erode" Assad's grip on his chemical weapons.

Obama's comments came as Republican House Speaker John Boehner placed new pressure on the president to explain "personally" how military action would serve U.S. goals and why such action would be legal without explicit authorization from Congress.

Separately, the administration planned to give the chairmen and ranking members of key congressional committees as well as the top leaders from each party in each chamber a classified briefing Thursday on the case against Assad, two officials said.

Obama eyeing 'shot across the bow' in Syria

The president says in a TV interview that he hasn't made a decision yet on using military force there.
'No interest' in open-ended conflict

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U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel testifies at a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on "Department Leadership." on Capitol Hill in Washington June 11, 2013. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

By Phil Stewart

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei (Reuters) - Since U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel left for Southeast Asia last week, he has been wrestling with a dilemma at the heart of Washington's policy on Syria and Hagel's own guiding philosophy - when and how to go to war.

"I think the world has had enough war," Hagel told a forum in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.

He was responding to a question about the threat of conflict with China but broadened his answer to talk about war, generally.

"I think one of the things that we have learned over the years, regardless of the region of the world, is that wars can't resolve differences," he said on Sunday.

But Hagel hinted in Indonesia the next day that a limited intervention in Syria might be necessary, saying nations sometimes must go to war - including for humanitarian reasons.

He had told reporters toward the start of his trip that the United States couldn't wait indefinitely to respond to any confirmed use of chemical weapons. "If, in fact, this was a deliberate use and attack by the Syrian government on its own people using chemical weapons, there may be another attack coming," he said.

The Southeast Asia tour was meant to highlight President Barack Obama's bid to place greater U.S. attention to the Asia-Pacific region after more than a decade of frustrating war in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hagel left on the tour last Thursday, just as more details were emerging of the extent of an apparent chemical weapons attack in which Syrian rebel groups say many hundreds of people were killed.

Before his modified Boeing 747 left U.S. airspace, Hagel, during a flight to a Hawaii, was dialed in to a White House meeting on Syria to give an update on military options as the Pentagon repositioned ships that might be called upon to act.

On every day of the tour, as global events gather pace, the former Republican senator has seemed to become more and more likely to oversee the first major U.S. military intervention since Libya and his first as defense secretary.

FIRST PERSON EXPERIENCE

Hagel, now 66, volunteered for the Vietnam War and fought alongside his own brother as an infantryman. He suffered shrapnel wounds and burns from mine blasts, earning two Purple Hearts - the decoration for troops wounded in battle.

When Obama announced Hagel's nomination for the job of defense secretary in January, he said Hagel was the kind of person American troops deserved, someone who could share their perspective. He quoted Hagel as saying: "My frame of reference...is geared towards the guy at the bottom who's doing the fighting and the dying."

Hagel earned Obama's respect during his Senate days in part for breaking ranks with fellow Republicans to oppose the Iraq war, where the U.S. military learned the hard way that its influence over sectarian tensions was limited at best.

"I think one of the reasons the president and he intellectually meshed so well...is that they share a view that the American military has unique capabilities to affect events throughout the world - but those capabilities should be used with great caution," said one senior Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

If there was, before Obama, a truism that Democrats were reluctant to use U.S. military power and Republicans were eager to do so, Hagel "falls squarely in the middle."

"His first and second and third instinct is never to rush to military force," the official said.

Hagel's periodic warnings on Syria to Congress have frustrated former Republican allies of his, particularly Senator John McCain, the leading voice in Washington for deep U.S. military involvement in Syria's civil war.

At one hearing in April, Hagel cautioned senators including McCain that "you better be damn sure, as sure as you can be" before committing to action in Syria.

"Because once you're into it, there isn't any backing out, whether it's a no-fly zone, safe zone...whatever it is," Hagel told senators.

"Once you're in, you can't unwind it. You can't just say, 'Well, it's not going as well as I thought it would go so we're gonna get out.'"

Even as the United States hardened its posture in the past week over Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons, a "red line" that Obama set for greater U.S. involvement, Hagel has remained focused on the long-term implications of any U.S. military action there.

"What is the long-term objective here? What are our long-term interests? What are we trying to accomplish in the way of influence, in the way of outcomes?" he told reporters as he flew to Malaysia at the start of the tour, speaking about deliberations underway.

LIMITS OF ACTION

With U.S. international credibility on the line, Obama appears poised to act - possibly opting for limited measures such as cruise missile strikes to punish President Bashar al-Assad and seek to deter further chemical attacks.

But Obama is expected to stop well short of anything remotely resembling Iraq.

Obama, even as he said he had not yet made a decision on military action, argued on Wednesday that a "tailored, limited" strike, not a protracted engagement like Iraq, could be enough to send a strong message that the use of chemical weapons cannot be tolerated.

"If we are saying in a clear and decisive but very limited way, we send a shot across the bow saying, 'Stop doing this,' this can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term," he told "PBS Newshour" in a televised interview.

Still, whether any U.S. action can be limited to a short and sharp punitive strike, or whether it would drag the United States into a broader regional conflict, remains to be seen.

The White House has stressed that any action in Syria would not be geared toward regime change.

That could, at least in part, be because the United States doesn't think moderate rebel groups are ready to fill the void that would be left if Assad were to fall - a point suggested in a recent letter to Congress by General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Dempsey - the top military advisor to Hagel and Obama - has been one of the most outspoken voices of caution on Syria, stressing the complexities of the conflict during a trip to the Middle East earlier this month, prior to the apparent chemical weapons attack.

Dempsey wrote in a letter to a lawmaker following that trip: "The use of U.S. military force can change the military balance, but it cannot resolve the underlying and historic ethnic, religious and tribal issues that are fueling this conflict."

Asked whether he shared Dempsey's views on Syria, Hagel said on August 23: "Any time force is required or used, there are risks, there are consequences. And I think General Dempsey's analysis of this has been very accurate and very correct and very appropriate."

"There's no disagreement between General Dempsey and me on his analysis," Hagel said.

Still, what appears to have been the large-scale use of chemical weapons has fundamentally changed U.S. calculations on military intervention. It has certainly had an emotional impact.

Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Monday of seeing images of entire families dead in their beds - without a drop of blood. Hagel, too, has been moved by the carnage.

"Another part of Chuck Hagel that is important here is that he really is horrified by scenes that we are seeing on the ground in Syria," the U.S. official said.

A second senior Obama administration official summed it up this way: Hagel, while recognizing the limits of military power, also understood that military action can sometimes be required "to deliver justice." That's particularly true when rules and norms of international law were violated, the official said.

Hagel told the BBC during a visit to Brunei that he had prepositioned assets and that the U.S. military was "ready to go" immediately, if ordered by Obama.

Just a day earlier, Hagel was asked how he could square his feelings that "the world has had enough war" with the looming possibility of U.S. military action in Syria.

Hagel's response spoke volumes.

"I didn't say, would never say, have never said, that no nation should ever go to war," Hagel said in Jakarta on Monday, declining to discuss the case of Syria explicitly.

"I wish the world was such that nations didn't go to war."

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel and Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Peter Henderson, Claudia Parsons and Tim Dobbyn)

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NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Police Department has secretly labeled entire mosques as terrorist organizations, a designation that allows police to use informants to record sermons and spy on imams, often without specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

Designating an entire mosque as a terrorism enterprise means that anyone who attends prayer services there is a potential subject of an investigation and fair game for surveillance.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the NYPD has opened at least a dozen "terrorism enterprise investigations" into mosques, according to interviews and confidential police documents. The TEI, as it is known, is a police tool intended to help investigate terrorist cells and the like.

Many TEIs stretch for years, allowing surveillance to continue even though the NYPD has never criminally charged a mosque or Islamic organization with operating as a terrorism enterprise.

The documents show in detail how, in its hunt for terrorists, the NYPD investigated countless innocent New York Muslims and put information about them in secret police files. As a tactic, opening an enterprise investigation on a mosque is so potentially invasive that while the NYPD conducted at least a dozen, the FBI never did one, according to interviews with federal law enforcement officials.

The strategy has allowed the NYPD to send undercover officers into mosques and attempt to plant informants on the boards of mosques and at least one prominent Arab-American group in Brooklyn, whose executive director has worked with city officials, including Bill de Blasio, a front-runner for mayor.

De Blasio said Wednesday on Twitter that he was "deeply troubled NYPD has labelled entire mosques & Muslim orgs terror groups with seemingly no leads. Security AND liberty make us strong."

The revelations about the NYPD's massive spying operations are in documents recently obtained by The Associated Press and part of a new book, "Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and bin Laden's Final Plot Against America." The book by AP reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman is based on hundreds of previously unpublished police files and interviews with current and former NYPD, CIA and FBI officials.

The disclosures come as the NYPD is fighting off lawsuits accusing it of engaging in racial profiling while combating crime. Earlier this month, a judge ruled that the department's use of the stop-and-frisk tactic was unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union and two other groups have sued, saying the Muslim spying programs are unconstitutional and make Muslims afraid to practice their faith without police scrutiny.

Both Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly have denied those accusations. Speaking Wednesday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Kelly reminded people that his intelligence-gathering programs began in the wake of 9/11.

NYPD Labeled Some Mosques Terrorism EnterprisesPlay video."

"We follow leads wherever they take us," Kelly said. "We're not intimidated as to wherever that lead takes us. And we're doing that to protect the people of New York City."

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The NYPD did not limit its operations to collecting information on those who attended the mosques or led prayers. The department sought also to put people on the boards of New York's Islamic institutions to fill intelligence gaps.

One confidential NYPD document shows police wanted to put informants in leadership positions at mosques and other organizations, including the Arab American Association of New York in Brooklyn, a secular social-service organization.

Linda Sarsour, the executive director, said her group helps new immigrants adjust to life in the U.S. It was not clear whether the department was successful in its plans.

The document, which appears to have been created around 2009, was prepared for Kelly and distributed to the NYPD's debriefing unit, which helped identify possible informants.

Around that time, Kelly was handing out medals to the Arab American Association's soccer team, Brooklyn United, smiling and congratulating its players for winning the NYPD's soccer league.

Sarsour, a Muslim who has met with Kelly many times, said she felt betrayed.

"It creates mistrust in our organizations," said Sarsour, who was born and raised in Brooklyn. "It makes one wonder and question who is sitting on the boards of the institutions where we work and pray."

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Before the NYPD could target mosques as terrorist groups, it had to persuade a federal judge to rewrite rules governing how police can monitor speech protected by the First Amendment.

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Zein Rimawi, 59, center, a leader and founder of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge and mosque, join a …

The rules stemmed from a 1971 lawsuit, dubbed the Handschu case after lead plaintiff Barbara Handschu, over how the NYPD spied on protesters and liberals during the Vietnam War era.

David Cohen, a former CIA executive who became NYPD's deputy commissioner for intelligence in 2002, said the old rules didn't apply to fighting against terrorism.

Cohen told the judge that mosques could be used "to shield the work of terrorists from law enforcement scrutiny by taking advantage of restrictions on the investigation of First Amendment activity."

NYPD lawyers proposed a new tactic, the TEI, that allowed officers to monitor political or religious speech whenever the "facts or circumstances reasonably indicate" that groups of two or more people were involved in plotting terrorism or other violent crime.

The judge rewrote the Handschu rules in 2003. In the first eight months under the new rules, the NYPD's Intelligence Division opened at least 15 secret terrorism enterprise investigations, documents show. At least 10 targeted mosques.

Doing so allowed police, in effect, to treat anyone who attends prayer services as a potential suspect. Sermons, ordinarily protected by the First Amendment, could be monitored and recorded.

Among the mosques targeted as early as 2003 was the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge.

"I have never felt free in the United States. The documents tell me I am right," Zein Rimawi, one of the Bay Ridge mosque's leaders, said after reviewing an NYPD document describing his mosque as a terrorist enterprise.

Rimawi, 59, came to the U.S. decades ago from the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

"Ray Kelly, shame on him," he said. "I am American."

It was not immediately clear whether the NYPD targeted mosques outside of New York City specifically using TEIs. The AP had previously reported that Masjid Omar in Paterson, N.J., was identified as a target for surveillance in a 2006 NYPD report.

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Dr. Muhamad Albar, far left, speaks to a congregation during Jumu'ah prayer service at the Islamic S …

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The NYPD believed the tactics were necessary to keep the city safe, a view that sometimes put it at odds with the FBI.

In August 2003, Cohen asked the FBI to install eavesdropping equipment inside a mosque called Masjid al-Farooq, including its prayer room.

Al-Farooq had a long history of radical ties. Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian sheik who was convicted of plotting to blow up New York City landmarks, once preached briefly at Al-Farooq. Invited preachers raged against Israel, the United States and the Bush administration's war on terror.

One of Cohen's informants said an imam from another mosque had delivered $30,000 to an al-Farooq leader, and the NYPD suspected the money was for terrorism.

But Amy Jo Lyons, the FBI assistant special agent in charge for counterterrorism, refused to bug the mosque. She said the federal law wouldn't permit it.

The NYPD made other arrangements. Cohen's informants began to carry recording devices into mosques under investigation. They hid microphones in wristwatches and the electronic key fobs used to unlock car doors.

Even under a TEI, a prosecutor and a judge would have to approve bugging a mosque. But the informant taping was legal because New York law allows any party to record a conversation, even without consent from the others. Like the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, the NYPD never demonstrated in court that al-Farooq was a terrorist enterprise but that didn't stop the police from spying on the mosques for years.

And under the new Handschu guidelines, no one outside the NYPD could question the secret practice.

Martin Stolar, one of the lawyers in the Handschu case, said it's clear the NYPD used enterprise investigations to justify open-ended surveillance. The NYPD should only tape conversations about building bombs or plotting attacks, he said.

"Every Muslim is a potential terrorist? It is completely unacceptable," he said. "It really tarnishes all of us and tarnishes our system of values."

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Members of a Muslim congregation pray during a Jumu'ah prayer service at the Islamic Society of Bay …

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Al-Ansar Center, a windowless Sunni mosque, opened in Brooklyn several years ago, attracting young Arabs and South Asians. NYPD officers feared the mosque was a breeding ground for terrorists, so informants kept tabs on it.

One NYPD report noted that members were fixing up the basement, turning it into a gym.

"They also want to start Jiujitsu classes," it said.

The NYPD was particularly alarmed about Mohammad Elshinawy, 26, an Islamic teacher at several New York mosques, including Al-Ansar. Elshinawy was a Salafist — a follower of a puritanical Islamic movement — whose father was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center attacks, according to NYPD documents.

The FBI also investigated whether Elshinawy recruited people to wage violent jihad overseas. But the two agencies investigated him very differently.

The FBI closed the case after many months without any charges. Federal investigators never infiltrated Al-Ansar.

"Nobody had any information the mosque was engaged in terrorism activities," a former federal law enforcement official recalled, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the investigation.

The NYPD wasn't convinced. A 2008 surveillance document described Elshinawy as "a young spiritual leader (who) lectures and gives speeches at dozens of venues" and noted, "He has orchestrated camping trips and paintball trips."

The NYPD deemed him a threat in part because "he is so highly regarded by so many young and impressionable individuals."

No part of Elshinawy's life was out of bounds. His mosque was the target of a TEI. The NYPD conducted surveillance at his wedding. An informant recorded the wedding, and police videotaped everyone who came and went.

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Zein Rimawi, 59, a leader and founder of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge and mosque, remain kneelin …

"We have nothing on the lucky bride at this time but hopefully will learn about her at the service," one lieutenant wrote.

Four years later, the NYPD was still watching Elshinawy without charging him. He is now a plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit, which was also filed by the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project at CUNY School of Law and the New York Civil Liberties Union.

"These new NYPD spying disclosures confirm the experiences and worst fears of New York's Muslims," ACLU lawyer Hina Shamsi said. "From houses of worship to a wedding, there's no area of New York Muslim religious or personal life that the NYPD has not invaded through its bias-based surveillance policy."

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Online: Documents

TEI Discontinuance: http://apne.ws/146zqF9

Informant Profiles: http://apne.ws/1aNfuyH

Elshinawy Surveillance: http://apne.ws/15fau4D

Handschu Minutes: http://apne.ws/1cenpD6

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AP's Washington investigative team can be reached at DCinvestigations@ap.org

Follow Goldman and Apuzzo at http://twitter.com/adamgoldmanap

and http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo

Secret move helps NYPD skirt law

A new revelation explains how police are spying on entire groups of people without evidence of wrongdoing.
Unconstitutional?