BANGOR – Sen. Susan Collins on Tuesday told a group of community leaders to prepare for a “long” and “difficult” effort as the U.S. tries to root out those behind last week’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“We have a difficult task ahead,” Collins, a member of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, said at an afternoon meeting of the Bangor Rotary Club. “Tracking down terrorists is not easy. If it had been, we’d have caught Osama bin Laden in 1988 when we first started looking for him.”

One week since the attacks that left New York’s twin towers in ruins and caused heavy damage to the nation’s center of military operations, the Maine Republican reiterated President Bush’s call for patience. And Collins, herself, called for an “unprecedented effort” by intelligence agencies, military and law enforcement investigators to track down those responsible – including the elusive bin Laden, whom she believed to be the “mastermind” behind the plot.

The Bangor-based Maine Army Guard and Maine Air National Guard, will likely be “critical” to that U.S. effort, added Collins, adding that she expected the units could be activated in coming weeks.

Collins, who has been in Maine since Friday, will return to Washington, D.C., today, where she expected to receive another briefing upon her arrival, she said.

Collins – when asked by one Rotarian how a long-planned and simultaneous hijacking of four passenger jets could have occurred without anyone knowing – said that one crucial part of the government’s stateside effort will be a review of U.S. intelligence agencies.

“Never, ever in any of our briefings, classified or not, was anything like this contemplated,” said Collins, who as a member of the subcommittee on emerging threats, will take part in the “intense review” of the nation’s intelligence agencies, she said.

“In the past decade, we’ve moved away from … spies to relying on technological means, and that has weakened us,” said Collins, who noted that only a small percentage of electronic intercepts are understood because of a lack of agents who speak Arabic. “As we have become so entranced by … letting the satellites do the work, or letting electronic intercepts be the source of information, we’ve forgotten about how important that human element is.”

Many of those at Tuesday’s meeting said they stood firm behind the administration’s call for retaliation, and welcomed a review of the intelligence community.

“I think in some ways, we’ve just thought, or have been hoping, that nothing like this could happen,” Rotary member and Bangor City Councilor Frank Farrington said after Collins’ talk. “But, like in times past, we get punched in the nose and then we do something about it.”