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6 The story of Padilla's quiet capture is the best evidence yet that the war against Al Qaeda has entered an entirely new phase. If the war began dramatically, with planes crashing into buildings and the Taliban fleeing Afghanistan, it is now mostly underground -- waged by terrorists, spooks, paramilitaries and G-men. "We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge," Bush told West Point graduates a few weeks ago. Many commentators thought he was talking about pre-emptively striking future foes like Iraq. But Bush was also putting a new emphasis on covert operations, which has raised fresh concerns about civil liberties. How far is America veering toward police-state tactics? "We shouldn't deceive ourselves. This is not a defensive game," says Jack Devine, a former CIA associate deputy operations director. "If we seal our ports, they're going to come across the Rio Grande, or from Canada. The truth is that [with new homeland security] we'll improve defensively by maybe 7 percent or 10 percent. The best hope we have is to go after and destroy the terrorist organization."
帕迪拉被悄悄抓获是迄今最好的证据，说明反基地组织的战争进入了一个崭新的阶段。如果说战争开始时颇具戏剧性，如飞机撞入高楼、塔利班逃离阿富汗，那么现在战争主要在地下进行――参与作战的是恐怖主义分子、间谍、准军事部队成员以及联邦调查局人员。“我们必须向敌人发起进攻，挫败其计划，在最可怕的威胁出现之前就勇敢地面对它们，”几个星期前布什对西点军校的毕业生说。许多评论员认为，他指的是要对伊拉克那样未来的敌人进行先发制人的打击。但布什同时重新强调秘密行动，这引起了对公民自由权利的新的关注。美国将在多大程度上转而采取警察国家的策略？“我们不应该自己欺骗自己。这并非防御方针，”前中央情报局行动处副处长杰克·迪瓦恩说。“如果我们封锁港口，他们可以从格兰德河，或加拿大进入。事实是，（有了新成立的国土安全局）我们的防御能力也许会提高7%到10%。我们最好的希望还是主动追逐并摧毁恐怖组织。”
7 What was Padilla's real plan, and how far along was it? Perhaps the endless interrogation he is now undergoing will tell. What American officials at O'Hare didn't do -- but were tempted to -- was to tail Padilla once he landed to see whom he was meeting. (3) Nervous after a torrent of criticism over other lost suspects -- principally the hijackers of September 11 -- the FBI decided he was too dangerous to take a chance with. As a result, U.S. officials say, they simply do not know whether Padilla was a lone wolf, or had a network of confederates in America. And if there is a nationwide manhunt for any accomplices, that, too, is taking place off the radar. All of which points up the main problem with conducting a secret war: it's difficult to tell who's winning.
帕迪拉的真正计划是什么，这个计划已经执行到什么程度？他正在接受的没完没了的审讯或许会告诉我们。奥海厄机场的美国官员没有做――但很想一试--的是，帕迪拉一下飞机就跟踪他，看他与谁接头。然而，由于因其他嫌犯成功逃逸――主要指那些9·11的劫机者――而受到一连串批评的联邦调查局，这时已十分紧张，认定帕迪拉太危险，不愿再冒丢失的风险。美国官员说，结果，他们根本不知道帕迪拉到底是单枪匹马，还是在美国有一伙同党。如果在全国搜查同党的话，那也无异于大海捞针。这一切都突出地反映了进行秘密战争的主要难题：胜负难定。
8 Sometimes not even the Feds know what the tally is -- which doesn't bode well for the new spirit of intelligence cooperation in Washington. Just before Padilla's flight, some American intelligence officials back in Washington became alarmed when they noticed that an abnormally large number of Swiss and U.S. passengers had booked last-minute passage on the same plane: it took a while for word to get through to the analysts that the last-minute passengers were the Swiss and FBI teams tailing the suspect. Even the White House, Pentagon and Justice Department couldn't seem to agree on what kind of threat Padilla posed. When Attorney General John Ashcroft announced portentously that Padilla was plotting a radiological bomb attack, White House officials scoffed privately; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz countered that the "plot" was mostly still talk.
有时连联邦调查局调查员也不知道目标在何处，这对华盛顿情报合作的新精神而言并非好的预兆。就在帕迪拉搭乘的班机起飞前，华盛顿的一些美国情报官员非常震惊，因为他们注意到，一大批瑞士及美国乘客在起飞前最后一刻订了同一次航班的票：过了一些时间这些分析家才接到消息，这些临时乘客正是跟踪嫌犯的瑞士和联邦调查局工作小组。甚至连白宫、五角大楼和司法部也对帕迪拉究竟会构成什么威胁存在意见分歧。当司法部长约翰·阿什克劳夫特矜持地宣布帕迪拉正在策划放射性炸弹袭击时，白宫的官员在私下里嗤之以鼻；副国防部长保罗·沃尔福威茨反驳说，所谓“策划”主要的还只是传闻。
9 There are other worrisome signs that terror could prove more slippery even than U.S. tactics to contain it. Late last week FBI agents were running down a warning from Canadian intelligence that Qaeda operatives might be targeting the G8 summit in Canada later this month. Last Friday, at the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, the fortified building's guardhouse was struck by a car bomb that killed at least 11 people. The attack was strikingly similar to a suspected Qaeda strike on a Pakistani naval bus in May, which slaughtered 14 people, including 11 French naval technicians. The surviving suspects slipped away. Despite a crackdown in Pakistan, its cities remain hosts and seedbeds for radicals. And while terrorists no longer have a haven in Afghanistan, they're now forming what one intelligence official calls "virtual training camps" on the Web. For the last two months, individuals in a U.S.-based Internet chat room have been frantically conversing, clearly wanting and planning to attack the United States, law-enforcement authorities say. At least one chat-room participant was asked if he could speak Spanish, since terrorist recruiters are looking for Arabs or other Muslims who "look Latin" and speak Spanish "to infiltrate the U.S."(4) All we can be sure of today is that they have one fewer recruit in Jose Padilla.
其他令人不安的迹象表明，恐怖活动可能比美国战术所能遏制的要棘手。上周晚些时候，联邦调查局特工在追查来自加拿大情报部门的一个警报，基地活动分子可能要袭击本月下旬在加拿大举行的八国峰会。上周五，在卡拉奇的美国领事馆，设防的大楼警卫队队部遭受汽车炸弹的袭击，造成至少11人死亡。这次袭击与5月份时怀疑是基地组织发起的对巴基斯坦一辆海军汽车的袭击有着惊人的相似之处，那次袭击造成14人死亡，包括11名法国海军技术人员。尚活着的疑犯溜走了。尽管在巴基斯坦开展了打击活动，各城市仍活跃着并产生出狂热分子。在阿富汗，恐怖主义者的确不再拥有庇护所，但现在他们在因特网上组织一位情报官员所谓的“虚拟培训营”。执法当局说，在最近两个月，美国一个因特网聊天室的参与者一直在发狂似地交谈，很明显要计划袭击美国。至少有一个参与聊天的人被问到会不会说西班牙语，因为招募恐怖分子的人在找长得像南美人、会说西班牙语的阿拉伯人或其他穆斯林，以便让他们“渗入美国”。今天我们所能肯定的仅仅是，他们损失了一个新成员何塞·帕迪拉。
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