FBI Official Says Terrorist Group Plotted N.Y. Bombing : Violence: Comments at hearing draw a mild rebuke from Director Sessions. He cautions against speculating on case without hard evidence.

WASHINGTON —  Assistant FBI Director James Fox told Congress Tuesday that he believes the World Trade Center bombing in New York was “organized by a large, well-known terrorist group.”

Though Fox and other investigators already have speculated that a terrorist organization might be responsible, his comments at a House hearing were the first official suggestion that the size and scope of the group extended well beyond the two suspects already in custody and a few close associates.

“This is a group that knows what it’s doing,” Fox told the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime and criminal justice headed by Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). “This was not a group of ad hoc terrorists.” Fox did not name any group.

His comments drew a mild rebuke from his boss, FBI Director William S. Sessions, who cautioned at the same House hearing against speculating publicly on the case--although he himself suggested that the attack does not signal a new wave of terrorism in the United States.

Sessions noted that Fox, the chief of the bureau’s New York City field office, was merely expressing his “gut reaction” and that investigators were mulling a number of theories without necessarily having any hard evidence about the culprits.

“We have not concluded this is an act of international terrorism,” he said, adding: “We should not speculate. This investigation will take months.”

When Schumer asked Sessions about the possible involvement of Hamas, a militant fundamentalist Palestinian organization, Sessions declined comment, saying that to do so publicly would be inappropriate.

Schumer complained that the FBI had given a “muted response” to his request last month to examine “political links” between Hamas and “operatives here in the United States.”

Schumer and Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) also questioned Sessions and a State Department official closely about any relationship between two suspects arrested during the bombing investigation and a militant Muslim cleric, Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman.

Thomas E. McNamara, coordinator for counterterrorism for the State Department, said that Abdul Rahman is not a suspect in the case.

Sessions refused to speculate on possible links between the blind cleric and Mohammed A. Salameh, who is being held without bail on charges of “aiding and abetting” the trade center bombing, and Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny, who was arrested when he resisted an FBI search of his Brooklyn apartment but has not been directly linked to the bombing.

Elgabrowny was the chief fund raiser and organizer of the defense of El Sayyid A. Nosair, who was imprisoned in connection with the 1990 murder in New York of Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the militant Jewish Defense League. Both Nosair and Salameh are said to have worshiped at the Jersey City, N.J., mosque where Abdul Rahman has sometimes preached.

Schumer used the hearing as a vehicle to push an anti-terrorism bill that would establish a new federal offense for domestic terrorism and provide law enforcement with other new tools.

“Are our borders too open?” Schumer asked. “Are weapons and explosives too available. . . . ? What tools do we need to place in the hands of our federal and local law enforcement agencies to help them protect all of us while still preserving the openness and freedom of our everyday lives?”

Rep. George W. Gekas (R-Pa.) called for immediate action on legislation to reinstate the death penalty for federal offenses, including the World Trade Center bombing.

On the other hand, some subcommittee members warned against moving too quickly, saying they were concerned that civil liberties could be unduly restricted.

Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose) urged colleagues “to question the argument that our open society leaves us vulnerable to terrorism. To the contrary, our democratic processes, tolerance for diversity and commitment to opportunity leave no fertile ground for terrorism to flourish.”

Sessions may have taken some steam out of the push for legislation by declaring that recent history does not indicate that the nation faces a new series of terrorist acts.

“The American people should always be vigilant, but this suspected act of terrorism (in New York) should not be viewed as the opening act in a coming wave of terror,” he said.

“The majority of terrorist attacks in the United States have been conducted by domestic groups principally in Puerto Rico by Puerto Rican terrorists,” Sessions said. “The last international terrorist incident occurred in April, 1992, when Iranian oppositionists took over the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York.

“Prior to that incident,” he stressed, “there had not been an international terrorist attack in the United States since 1983.”

He noted that, although many predicted a rash of terrorist acts around the world during the Persian Gulf War, virtually none occurred.