Search And Disrupt

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And being wary--or even fearful. Some local law-enforcement officials think the FBI's public warning last Thursday, coming after repeated alarms on the nonpublic National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System, was overblown. "Without a developed threat, the alert is difficult to operationalize," says Michael Jordan, public information coordinator of the St. Paul police department in Minnesota. "We can't go to double-heightened alert. We can't have all our officers working 24 hours a day."

Some say even that wouldn't be enough. "In a country of 250 million people, our vulnerabilities are essentially infinite," says Bremer of the National Commission on Terrorism. "No matter how good our intelligence is, no matter how much you change the FBI's culture, that is not going to be enough. The fundamental thing is to eradicate the terrorists." Which is why the most important work in preventing terrorism at home may be taking place abroad--in the mountains of Afghanistan, and in the efforts to freeze al-Qaeda-linked bank accounts around the globe.

--Reported by Massimo Calabresi, Elaine Shannon, Douglas Waller and Michael Weisskopf/Washington; Amanda Bower/New York; and Sarah Sturmon Dale/Minneapolis