Last week U.S. intelligence agencies received information that terrorists were planning to bomb New York, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. According to foreign intelligence sources, various terrorist groups are on the move. Previously, on Dec. 14, U.S. officials apprehended Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian, at a Canadian border crossing. Officials say Ressam was attempting to transport explosives (or "bomb parts") past a border checkpoint near Seattle. Another Algerian, identified as Mustafa Roubici, was arrested at a Vermont border crossing. No actual explosives or weapons were found in the Vermont case, but special dogs detected the odor of explosives and weapons in the back seat and trunk of the vehicle.

It is believed that Ressam and Roubici belong to a terrorist organization called the Armed Islamic Group, which has carried out attacks in Algeria and France. It is said that the Armed Islamic Group is connected with Osama bin Laden. According to U.S. officials, bin Laden masterminded the Aug. 7, 1998 bombings at the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In response to those bombings the United States launched air strikes against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, where bin Laden operates business enterprises and has base camps (respectively). Osama bin Laden now lives in Afghanistan, but Afghan officials claim he is disarmed and poses no threat. This is doubtful, however, since last week 13 terrorists were arrested in Jordan. They had just come from Afghanistan where they undoubtedly met with bin Laden.

To better understand who bin Laden is, and how the present Islamic terror network originated, it is important to start with the first organizers of it. In the mid-1980s PLO leader Yasser Arafat -- a client of East European Communists -- began employing Islamic terminology in his speeches. Combining Leninist and Islamic phrases, Arafat spoke of the Arab revolution and "the will of Allah" in a single breath. A man utterly without religion, Arafat recognized the advantage in hijacking sincere Islamic believers to the cause of Moscow-sponsored international terror. Khalil al-Wazir, PLO military chief at the time, brought about a secret alliance in Jordan between the Jordanian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Marxist Cells (a secret Communist organization within Jordan). In fact, the PLO set up joint training camps for young Communists and Muslims who would be sent to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Fight the Soviets in Afghanistan?

One has to learn to think deviously in order to understand the politics of South Asia and the Middle East. The Kremlin's allies in the Middle East helped to build an all-Arab mujahideen fighting force. This force was then sent to Pakistan for advanced training, then entered the fighting in Afghanistan. This force included members of the Egyptian Takfir wa-al-Hijra, the group responsible for assassinating President Anwar Sadat. Accomplished under Islamic colors, the assassination of Sadat was much desired by Moscow. After all, the courageous Arab leader had kicked the Russians out of Egypt and made peace with Israel. If one looks at the alliance between these early Islamic fanatics and the Communists, one cannot help being amazed. Communism is pure atheism -- totally opposed to all religious belief; and yet, the Communists saw fit to support, train and infiltrate the most fanatical Islamic groups.

The penetration and exploitation of radical Islam by Moscow is nothing new. Those who have not studied the Afghan war, who do not know Russian tactics up close, probably do not realize that the Kremlin typically creates and controls its own opposition. In that way, enemies can be maneuvered more easily into traps. Agents of influence can thereby be promoted from the enemy ranks. In fact, the Russians played the Afghan war not so much to destroy all Islamic forces in South Asia, but to destroy the Islamic forces Moscow could not otherwise control through agent networks and the lure of drug trafficking.

Russian involvement in radical Islam has a long history. On Nov. 20, 1979, the Grand Mosque in Mecca was seized by a highly trained unit of 1,500 men. This uprising was very dangerous, and posed a grave threat to the Saudi monarchy. Most of the unit had been trained in two Soviet client states, Libya and South Yemen. Their training instructors had been East German Communists and Cubans. The unit that seized the Grand Mosque was partly commanded by Communists, despite its overtly Islamic pronouncements. In fact, Juhayman ibn-Muhammad ibn-Sayf al-Utaibi, who led the rebellion at the Grand Mosque declared himself a "mahdi" (messiah). After an initial firefight Juhayman delivered a sermon, denouncing corruption and inciting militants throughout Saudi Arabia to storm government buildings and bring the monarchy to an end. If the Saudi monarchy had collapsed, the overt government would have been Islamic and fundamentalist. But this government, guided by East German and Cuban advisors, would have been under Moscow's thumb.

Although it is impossible to say with any certainty, the revolution in Iran may have been led by Soviet agents. According to Yossef Bodansky, author of a newly released book on Osama bin Laden, the Soviet KGB actively supported the Iranian group that seized the U.S. Embassy and took 63 Americans hostage in November 1979. Bodanksy is currently the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. He is also director of research of the International Strategic Studies Association. More than three months ago Bodansky reported that Osama bin Laden may have acquired up to 20 suitcase nuclear bombs from Russia, smuggled to him by Chechen rebels. Also according to Bodansky, bin Laden was looking to hire former Russian spetsnaz commandos who knew how to operate suitcase nuclear bombs.

Is bin Laden preparing a nuclear strike against America?

There is no way an "independent" terrorist could freely acquire such a large number of nuclear weapons and also secure the help of Russian specialists without being in secret collusion with the Kremlin. Evidence of bin Laden's collusion with the Russians is only indirect, but Bodansky tells us that during the crisis in Somalia, when bin Laden was organizing the armed forces that later killed 18 and wounded 78 American soldiers near the Mogadishu airport, bin Laden had tapped former Afghan Communist pilots to fly special re-supply missions into Somalia. You would think that any self-respecting Islamic fighter would not employ the services of Russian-trained Communist pilots, men who flew supplies into DRA (Democratic Republic of Afghanistan) bases during the Afghan war. But bin Laden has a number of curious links to Moscow's side of the Afghan coin.

Osama bin Laden participated in a suspicious battle fought against the DRA in 1989. It was the so-called battle of Jalalabad. In this battle wave after wave of mujahideen were sent to their deaths against Communist fortifications. Rob Shultheis, in his moving book, "Night Letters: Inside Wartime Afghanistan," was on the road from Jalalabad and saw the trucks loaded with dead Afghan bodies. One vehicle passed him on the road, and it was fully loaded with slaughtered Afghan commanders.

This disaster, of course, was arranged by Russian agents within the mujahideen leadership. Agents like Gulbaddin Hekmatiyar, a notorious mujahideen drug trafficker who, according to Bodanksy, spent much of the war betraying Afghan resistance groups to the Soviets. Hekmatiyar was nonetheless recognized by our stupid CIA as a genuine freedom fighter. Given Bodanksy's information, we know that bin Laden worked with Hekmatiyar, who later became prime minister of Afghanistan. Drug trafficking, of course, is Moscow's main weapon of penetration and subversion worldwide. Eventually Hekmatiyar's cover was blown when a Russian cargo plane was forced down near Kandahar. It was laden with 3.5 million rounds of ammunition -- from Russia with love -- for Hekmatiyar's troops. When he was driven from power by the Taliban, Hekmatiyar fled north, toward the "former" Soviet frontier. This is the sort of double game many in the mujahideen played during the Afghan war.

Is bin Laden a sincere believer in Allah?

If we look at Osama bin Laden's early years, we do not find a dedicated Muslim. His conversion happened suddenly, and curiously. In his youth bin Laden liked to go to Beirut to drink and womanize. Was he -- a prominent Saudi youth -- recruited by Soviet agents in Lebanon in the 1970s?

There is no way of telling what bin Laden's true allegiances are. The terrorist world is a "wilderness of mirrors." But as the United States braces itself for a possible terrorist event, we should all be aware that Moscow could be the ultimate behind-the-scenes mastermind. We have to remember that Osama bin Laden was among those who blamed the slaughter at Jalalabad on America. He did not think to blame Communist agents within the mujahideen. He was connected to Hekmatiyar. He worked with the Arab mujahideen which had suspicious connections to the radical left. And, according to Bodansky, he has worked closely with the Russian-trained Iraqi intelligence service. Given the diversionary and strategic importance of terrorist attacks in setting up a nuclear first strike by Russia, America's vigilance must be many-sided when it comes to the bin Laden terror threat.