Threat to Bagram Was Known

Suicide Bomber Cells Operating Nearby in Kabul, NATO Says

A policeman helps a relative of one of at least 23 people who were killed in a suicide bombing Tuesday near Bagram air base, the main U.S. installation in Afghanistan. The blast occurred when Vice President Cheney was inside. (By Musadeq Sadeq -- Associated Press)

KABUL, Feb. 28 -- Intelligence reports indicated that the Taliban had the ability to carry out suicide attacks near the main U.S. base in Afghanistan even before a deadly bombing during a visit by Vice President Cheney, NATO said Wednesday.

Col. Tom Collins, the top spokesman for NATO's force in Afghanistan, said suicide bomb cells were present in the capital, Kabul, just 30 miles south of Bagram air base.

"We know for a fact that there has been recent intelligence to suggest that there was the threat of a bombing in the Bagram area," Collins said. "It's clear that there are suicide bomber cells operating in this country. There are some in the city of Kabul."

Tuesday's bombing killed at least 23 people, including two Americans, outside Bagram while Cheney was meeting with officials inside. The Taliban, an Islamic militia that ruled most of Afghanistan until the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, said the attack was aimed at Cheney, but officials said it posed no real threat to the vice president.

The attacker never tried to penetrate even the first of several U.S.-manned security checkpoints at Bagram, instead detonating his explosives among a group of Afghan workers outside the base.

"The Taliban's claims that they were going after the vice president were absurd," Collins said.

Collins said it was unclear whether the Taliban had really known of Cheney's visit, or if the timing of the attack was a coincidence. The last suicide bombing at Bagram was in June 2006, when an attack aimed at a U.S. convoy wounded two Afghans near a market area outside the base.

U.S. Ambassador Ronald E. Neumann said he did not believe that the Taliban had responded to Cheney's presence, given that he arrived on Monday and stayed the night only because bad weather forced him to postpone a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"I just have not seen the ability to react that quickly, to grab your handy-dandy latest suicide candidate, who is usually not your brightest fellow around, and get him mobilized and get him up to the gate," Neumann said. "It strains credulity for me."