U.S. Worried About Homegrown Terrorists

WASHINGTON -- The nation's homeland security chief said Friday he is increasingly worried about "homegrown" terrorists and will give more help to local police trying to root out such plots.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced several changes in how the government chooses to dole out anti-terror money to major U.S. cities, moving away from what he said was too much "bean-counting" last year that subjected the agency to ridicule.

"This is going to be an amazing admission for a public official. ... I actually listen to people," Chertoff said. "Speaking for myself, I don't believe that I'm infallible or that I have nothing to learn from anybody."

The agency will do several things differently from last year when New York and Washington officials complained that the urban area security initiative had slashed their funding by 40 percent.

DHS will now allow six cities to use some grants to pay for police officers devoted exclusively to anti-terror work, such as increased security measures during a terror alert or investigations into local terror suspects.

One such suspect, Pakistani immigrant and high school dropout Shahawar Matin Siraj, is to be sentenced Monday in federal court in New York for plotting to detonate explosives at a busy subway station _ a case that was investigated by the New York Police Department.

Chertoff said that even as governments try to guard against sophisticated worldwide networks like al-Qaida, there is a growing worry about local threats.

"We're very concerned about intelligence-gathering," said Chertoff. "We also know the matter of homegrown terrorism is becoming an increasing concern all around the globe."

Because of that, the six urban areas at the highest risk will be allowed to spend up to 25 percent of their terror grant money on day-to-day police work _ provided that work is exclusively devoted to anti-terror efforts.

Those eligible urban areas are: New York and New Jersey, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and Long Beach, Chicago, Houston, and Washington, D.C.

The urban-areas grants, giving $747 million to a total of 45 cities, were announced as part of $1.7 billion in federal money for state and local anti-terror efforts.

One of the grant program's biggest critics in Congress, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the changes Chertoff described, but he said he will still wait to see what happens when the final dollar amounts for each city are announced later this year.