Suspect Motives; Besieged by the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, Team Bush turned attention to the hunt for Al Qaeda.(George W. Bush)

Byline: Evan Thomas, Daniel Klaidman and Michael Isikoff, With bureau reports

John Ashcroft was in familiar form, part Sgt. Joe Friday, part Prophet of Doom. Standing by giant mug shots of seven terrorist suspects, the U.S. attorney general warned, "Be on the lookout... for each of these seven individuals. They all pose a clear and present danger to America. They all should be considered armed and dangerous." America, it seemed, faced a frightening summer. As exhibit A, Ashcroft cited a statement from an "Al Qaeda spokesman" that plans for an attack "to hit the United States hard" were "90 percent complete."

But things are not always as they seem in the wilderness of mirrors known as the war on terror. The facts are a little less stark, the motives for airing them more mixed than Ashcroft's grim warnings would suggest. Once again it appears that politics and national security are bedfellows in post-9/11 America. That is not to say that Bush administration officials are crying wolf. It's just that they know less--and want more--than the attorney general appeared to be saying.

The "90 percent" warning from an "Al Qaeda spokesman" so dramatically cited by Ashcroft was actually an e-mail to a London-based Arabic newspaper from an organization called the Brigade of Abu Hafs Al Masri. The e-mail first publicly surfaced two months ago, after the Madrid train bombings. Intelligence analysts have been skeptical about the so-called brigade, which may be loosely linked to Al Qaeda, or just some creepy terror wanna-bes. Over the past year, the brigade has claimed credit for the bombings of two synagogues and the British Consulate in Istanbul. But it also boasted that it caused the New York City blackout, which was the result of mechanical breakdown and computer malfunction.

And the seven suspects ominously displayed by Ashcroft? They are disparate and somewhat shadowy individuals who have some ties to America but are probably scattered around the world. Most of them have been on the well-publicized FBI most-wanted lists for months, if not years. (With one intriguing exception: Adam Yahiye Gadahn, who is apparently a second "American Taliban," like John Walker Lindh a California Lost Boy who wound up in Afghanistan allegedly working for Al Qaeda.)

The White House, NEWSWEEK has learned, played a role in the decision to go public with the warning. According to a White House official, President Bush signed off on the press conference after meeting with FBI Director Robert Mueller, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Ashcroft. With the president's poll numbers dropping, the Bush administration is surely eager to divert attention from Iraq to the terrorist threat.

But just because the administration may have been playing politics to shift attention from its own failings does not mean the terror warnings are unwarranted. FBI and CIA intelligence analysts are convinced that Al Qaeda or its offshoots are determined to strike in America before the November elections. "Chatter" intercepted by U.S. intelligence suggests that the terrorists will try to hit symbolic or politically important targets, like the Democratic and Republican political conventions in Boston and New York this summer or June's G8 economic summit in Sea Island, Georgia.