ASHINGTON, June 10 — The Justice Department announced today that it had broken up a plot by Al Qaeda to detonate a radioactive bomb inside the United States by arresting an American citizen in the case.Posted on 06/10/2002 10:25:06 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
ASHINGTON, June 10 — The Justice Department announced today that it had broken up a plot by Al Qaeda to detonate a radioactive bomb inside the United States by arresting an American citizen in the case.
"We have captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to build and explode a radiological dispersion device, or `dirty bomb,' in the United States," Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a televised announcement from Moscow, where he was meeting with Russian official on unrelated matters.
Mr. Ashcroft identified the arrested man as Abdullah al-Muhajir, 31, a former Chicago gang member who American officials said was born Jose Padilla in Brooklyn and raised as a Roman Catholic but who converted to Islam and began using a new name.
Mr. Padilla has been in custody since May 8, when he was arrested on a sealed material witness warrant at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago as he arrived on a flight from Zurich.
Senior government officials said Mr. Padilla had discussed the bomb plot with top Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and Afghanistan, among them Abu Zubaydah, the Osama bin Laden lieutenant who was captured in Pakistan in March and later told United States officials about the plan. But they also said Mr. Padilla had not obtained the materials to make such a device.
Mr. Zubaydah, the most senior Qaeda leader in custody, told his American interrogators that several Qaeda members had come to him late last December with a proposal to acquire and detonate a radiological device, a so-called dirty bomb. Mr. Zubaydah did not identify Mr. Padilla by name, but provided enough information to allow the Central Intelligence Agency to check with other sources — including documents seized in Afghanistan — to narrow the search to Mr. Padilla, officials said.
"We were able to figure out who Zubaydah was talking about, and then screen him and follow him," said an American intelligence official.
In New York City, where Mr. Padilla was held after his arrest until being transferred on Sunday to a military jail in South Carolina, a law enforcement official described Mr. Padilla as someone who tried to make inroads with terrorists after his conversion to Islam.
Other officials said that before he left Pakistan, Mr. Padilla was told by Al Qaeda leaders to fly to the United States to conduct reconnaissance for several possible plots, including the possibility of blowing up hotel rooms and gas stations.
But the plot outlined by United States officials today centered on a plan to carry out an attack using a bomb that uses conventional explosives to spew potentially lethal radioactive material across a wide area.
American intelligence officials cautioned that the plot had been in early planning stages and no time for the operation had been set. They said that there was also no evidence that Mr. Padilla or any other Qaeda operatives had obtained the materials needed to construct a dirty bomb.
"They didn't seem to think they would have trouble getting radiological materials, but they didn't have any of it," said one official.
Donna Newman, Mr. Padilla's lawyer in New York, said federal authorities had given her little information about the accusations against Mr. Padilla. She also expressed dismay that the government had suddenly transferred him to the military jail in South Carolina.
American officials said Al Qaeda's leadership was apparently intrigued by Mr. Padilla's being an American citizen who might have an easier time of gaining entry to the United States than other Qaeda members.
The announcement of the arrest seemed to suggest that the Bush administration had succeeded in executing the kind of aggressive preventive action that officials say they have concentrated on since Sept. 11.
The announcement could also prove a lift for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency, which have been under heavy criticism in Congress for missing potential warning signs last year that might have disrupted the the hijacking plot.
Agents picked up Mr. Padilla's trail after he and two other men were detained by Pakistani authorities on a passport violation in April, officials said. Mr. Padilla left Pakistan in early April and traveled from Switzerland to Egypt and then back to Switzerland.
F.B.I. agents secretly boarded his flight from Zurich to the United States to keep him under surveillance. But worried that Mr. Padilla might disrupt the Chicago-bound flight, agents asked airline security personnel in Zurich to inspect his luggage carefully and his personal effects, including his shoes.
"They checked to make sure his shoes weren't funky," said one official, referring to the case of Richard C. Reid, a British convert to Islam who was charged with a terrorist act after officials said he tried to detonate a shoe bomb on a Paris-to-Miami flight last December.
Mr. Padilla was arrested as soon as the flight touched down, officials said, because agents hoped to obtain his cooperation. A search revealed that he was carrying about $10,000.
The New York law enforcement official said, however, that Mr. Padilla had been uncooperative during his month in detention at the Metropolitan Corrections Center in downtown Manhattan.
The decision to make an immediate arrest appeared to be part of the shift since Sept. 11 from lengthy covert surveillance operations to intervention to prevent further terrorist attacks.
Today, Mr. Padilla was being held in a high security jail at the Charleston Naval Weapons Station in South Carolina. Bush administration officials said Mr. Padilla had been declared an enemy combatant, a status that makes it easier for the government to detain him without having to bring a criminal charge that would force it disclose sensitive intelligence sources.
There was also some question as to whether there was enough evidence, absent information gathered from intelligence sources, to bring a traditional criminal prosecution that could be won in court. That meant, officials said, that the best and perhaps only realistic alternative was to turn him over to military custody in which he could be held indefinitely.
Federal prosecutors said they announced the arrest today because they had faced a hearing scheduled for Tuesday when they could have been forced to decide whether to charge him formally with a crime.
The plot as explained by the authorities seemed to follow the outlines of a scenario that counterterrorism experts had long feared. They have predicted that a radioactive bomb would be easier for terrorists to obtain than a nuclear device.
Officials said Mr. Padilla met with Mr. Zubaydah in Afghanistan last December and raised with him then the possibility of a dirty bomb attack on the United States.
Mr. Padilla then traveled to Pakistan, where he received training from Al Qaeda in the wiring of explosives, intelligence officials said.
Mr. Padilla stayed at a Qaeda safe house in Lahore, Pakistan, for a time and conducted research on radiological devices on the Internet, officials said.
At Mr. Zubaydah's behest, Mr. Padilla also traveled to Karachi to discuss several possible plans, the officials said.
A senior administration official said Mr. Zubaydah was not the only Qaeda member in custody who had led them to find Mr. Padilla. "Abu Zubaydah was one of the sources, but not the only one," the official said. "It's a rather impressive variety of sources."
The official said Mr. Padilla had "left an amazing number of tracks around."
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