Bush Sharpens Attack Plan, First Attacks Likely to be.. bin Laden Network, Rather Than Terror States

A senior Bush administration official said yesterday that the ""initial phase'' of the assault on terrorism would be aimed at Osama bin Laden and his network in Afghanistan but that the scale and timing of the next, broader phase had yet to be worked out.

International posse joins hunt to retrace suspects' deadly trail

Law agencies surprised by how easily the hijackers slipped into American society

Toronto Star

Nicolaas van Rijn

STAFF REPORTER

The 19 hijackers at the centre of last week's attack on America are ghosts today, literally and figuratively, but that hasn't stopped a global posse of 10,000 American agents from moving heaven and earth to create a picture of the men who changed our way of life.

Backing up the American agents are tens of thousands of law enforcement officers around the world, ranging from small-town sheriffs to Interpol and international terrorism experts.

``If you're in law enforcement, you're involved in this, no matter where in the world you are, no matter what nationality,'' said a U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in Chicago yesterday. ``This goes beyond national borders, and this takes priority over everything else.

``For now, this is all that matters.''

The web they've cast has so far turned up more than 50,000 leads and nearly 250 suspects, potential associates of the suspects and and possible witnesses.

Among the new developments:

The 19 hijackers, and many of their alleged accomplices, spent months criss-crossing the United States by air, car and rail, scouting out - investigators now believe - the soft underbelly of commercial air travel. Their travels took them to California, Arizona, Texas, Illinois, Virginia and, of course, Florida and the American northeast, where many were based.

Some were actually captured on airport surveillance cameras during the spring and summer as they practised for the attack, taking the same flights they would eventually hijack to become familiar with airport and flight crew routines.

In the mangled wreckage of the World Trade Center, investigators recovered what they are hailing as a ``major find'' - a passport belonging to one of the suspected hijackers.

Deep in a Pennsylvania pit, all that remains of United Airlines Flight 93 and its 45 souls on board, searchers have recovered the cockpit voice recorder, containing audible signals and a voice speaking a foreign language.

Some 50 people in all - both hijackers and the people associated with them - took flight lessons, mostly in Florida.

A focus on the money trail left by the hijackers has uncovered new links around the globe, including France, where seven were arrested yesterday in connection with alleged plans to attack American interests in France, Germany and the Middle East.

Authorities are investigating an underground banking system commonly used in south Asia and east Africa known as ``hawala,'' or ``in trust'' in Hindi, India's national language.

Money is deposited with a broker in one place and intended recipients get a code or token that lets them collect the same amount somewhere else, usually from a small merchant belonging to the same clan. The actual cash never leaves the country.

Terrorist cells also are engaging increasingly in lucrative petty crimes such as credit card fraud and identity theft to finance their operations, experts say.

U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week there is evidence that the terrorist network founded and bankrolled by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden - who has a personal worth exceeding $300 million (U.S.) - has now spread to 50 or 60 countries, including Canada and the United States. His Al Qaeda organization has links to at least 19 world terror organizations and has the highest rating of activity, ahead of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas movements that attack Israel.

A suicide note from Mohamed Atta, 33, has been found in his bag, which he pointedly left in Boston's Logan Airport Sept. 11 as he boarded American Airlines Flight 11, which investigators believe he later flew into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

The letter, which some reports say was written in 1996, said he planned to kill himself so he could go to heaven as a martyr.

American investigators continue to say Atta may have gone to Canada with one or more accomplices just before the attack. They may then have driven a rental car onto a ferry going from Nova Scotia to Bar Harbour, Me., where they spent the night before boarding the doomed flights.

Solid links have been uncovered to a terrorist support network that spans the world. The discovery has helped forge a worldwide coalition against terrorism with some unlikely partners. Even Yemen, hardly a traditional American ally, is co-operating and has arrested more than a dozen suspects.

Initial American reports that the 19 hijackers had a Canadian connection appeared to be borne out earlier this week when police in the Chicago suburb of Burbank arrested - at gunpoint - convenience store clerk Nabil Al-Marabh, who used two Parkdale addresses in Toronto as his place of residence in the past six years.

A German official said the country may be home to as many as 100 terrorist ``sleepers,'' Islamic extremists who trained in Afghanistan but live normal lives until activated for an attack. Germany yesterday issued several new arrest warrants in connection with the American investigation.

Moroccan authorities expelled one of the founding members of Algeria's banned Islamic Salvation Front after they learned he served as a volunteer who fought with Afghan rebels fighting against Soviet troops in the 1980s.

In France, the mother of Zacarias Moussouai, a French-Moroccan man held since before the Sept. 11 attacks and currently detained in New York, told the French magazine L'Express that her son was ``brainwashed'' by Islamic terrorists.

While the FBI has backed off recent assertions that it has positively identified all 19 hijackers - the agency now admits that several of the hijackers may have been operating under assumed names - it remains confident most of the IDs will stand up to scrutiny.

``We now know who some of the people are,'' said one high-level FBI source in Washington, but conceded: ``We don't know near enough about them.

``There are other individuals out there,'' the source added, ``and you'd think we'd be able to catch them. But you don't know what kind of safe houses they have, if they have them. Who is providing them logistical support?

``You need time to put together where these guys have been, and who they have associated with,'' the source said. ``These guys are very mobile, as evident in the number of houses they've had. They are not easy to track at all.''

Investigators have also rounded up evidence that the devastating Sept. 11 attack against America wasn't meant to end with the kamikaze attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington.

Democrat Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, has said the hijackings were intended to be the first in a series of attacks over several days, suggesting other members of the network remain at large - and perhaps still capable of action.

``There has been credible evidence gathered since (Sept. 11) that (the) attacks were not designed to be a one-day event,'' Graham told the Orlando Sentinel ``There were other acts of terrorism in the United States and elsewhere that were part of this plan.''

The attacks would have been random - and completely unpredictable, Graham added: ``Not necessarily hijacking another airliner, but maybe putting a chemical into a city's water system, or blowing up a bridge in a major urban centre.''

Acting on information obtained from potential accomplices of the 19 hijackers, American authorities quickly alerted municipal water systems to guard against sabotage.

Fire and police departments across the United States were warned to guard against the theft of their emergency vehicles, which - it was feared - could be loaded with bombs and driven to a target.

Investigators now believe other would-be hijackers, who formed their own self-contained cells as members of bin Laden's Al Qaeda, were set to hijack other flights. But they were foiled when North American airline traffic was grounded in the wake of the attacks on New York City and Washington.

Above all, the exhaustive investigation has succeeded in creating detailed portraits of the 19 men who stunned the world with their brazen attacks on the symbols of American capitalism and military might.

The hijackers are still surprising U.S. law enforcement officers with the ease with which they slipped seamlessly into American society.

``These are men who could have made it in America, but instead they made it their mission to destroy America,'' a Boston police commander said yesterday.

They lived in ordinary neighbourhoods. Drove Plymouth vans and invited their neighbours - and the kids - over for barbecues and video games. Some worked out at health clubs - and learned the essentials of down-and-dirty hand-to-hand streetfighting. One personal trainer who gave the lessons said later they would have come in very handy in overpowering unarmed and unsuspecting airline passengers.

The hijackers were also different.

Instead of seeking only to divert a flight to make a political point, these were were mature men, technically savvy, and willing to spend years working on a plan that would - all going well - mean death for all the active participants.

Educated, articulate and comfortable with technology, the hijackers were able to maintain discipline and the security of their individual cells.

``What happened on Sept. 11 has demolished a number of our presumptions about suicide attacks,'' Brian Jenkins, a terrorism specialist with the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif., told USA Today. ``It's possible to get one person to make that commitment and carry it out. But as you add a second, a third, a fourth, that chance increases on the way to the mission that somebody is going to say: `This is a bad idea.' ''

The 19 spent months flying around the United States, scouting for likely flights to hijack for their missions. Law enforcement authorities now believe the scouting flights began last April, and continued until the hijackers were satisfied they had four perfect flights - early-morning cross-country flights, heavily laden with fuel and light on passengers who could offer resistance to men armed only with knives and box cutters.

Mohamed Atta, increasingly being fingered by investigators as a key planner, is both an anomaly and the paradigm of a new kind of terrorist - sophisticated and smart, determined to achieve his goal even if it means taking his own life.

Atta, who has lived in Egypt and Germany, was fiercely anti-American while he was studying urban planning at Hamburg's Technical University, said Ralph Bodenstein, a German researcher who does urban studies work in the Arab world. Bodenstein, who said he spent many hours with Atta in 1995, when Atta was part of a three-man team studying ways to ease Cairo's traffic woes, said Atta's anti-American views were pronounced.

Earlier this year he travelled to Europe at least twice, both times flying directly from the United States to Spain. During one of those visits, investigators believe, Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer. Documents released by federal agents also show Atta was booked to fly Oct. 13 on a Delta airlines flight from Baltimore to San Francisco.

Investigators believe Atta's reservation on the non-stop transcontinental flight hints at a contingency plan to strike again had the Sept. 11 plans been called off.

And, just days before the attacks, Atta and two other hijackers wired funds totalling more than $10,000 to associates in the United Arab Emirates. Atta's transfers were made Sept. 8 and 9. Marwan al-Shehhi and Waleed Alshehri made theirs just before boarding their doomed flights in Boston Sept. 11.

Investigators have also revealed that Atta and at least two other hijackers made a trip to Las Vegas in the months preceding the attack, and say the name of Atta's fellow hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari was used to rent two safety deposit boxes at a Miami Bank of America branch.

Investigators caution that much of what they have assembled is raw intelligence - some of it only uncorroborated tips from the public - and must still be analyzed and verified.

In other developments:

Florida appears to have been a major staging base for the terrorist cells involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. Reconstructing the hijackers' past from school records, apartment and hotel receipts, credit card slips and interviews with pilots, landlords and neighbours, investigators have determined that 15 of the 19 hijackers had Florida ties, including seven who were believed to be pilots. In all, more than 40 people connected with the case had Florida addresses. Investigators have tracked the terrorists to at least five Florida flight schools. Seven of the men - including three on the United jet that crashed in Pennsylvania - used addresses in Delray Beach, 30 kilometres south of West Palm Beach. Five other hijackers stayed in the south Florida community of Hollywood.

In New Jersey, another major area of activity, authorities have detained at least 13 people in connection with the attacks. Among those netted in the post-attack sweep were three men stopped in Elizabeth, carrying more than $11,000 in cash and a one-way plane ticket to Syria.

Police in Texas detained two men who shared a Jersey City apartment after they were found carrying box cutters and thousands of dollars in cash.

Removed from an Amtrak train in Fort Worth, they were taken into custody on immigration charges after authorities said they found box-cutting knives, hair dye and $5,000 in cash. The men, Ayub Ali Khan, 51, and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, 47, said they were from India. They have been flown to New York and are being held as material witnesses. The FBI said the men boarded a flight from Newark, N.J., to San Antonio the morning of the attacks. The flight was diverted to St. Louis, where the men apparently took an Amtrak train bound for San Antonio. FBI agents also searched the home of a San Antonio doctor believed to be related to at least one of the alleged hijackers, and held the doctor, Albader Alhazmi, on an immigration violation.

California authorities say they have arrested a San Diego man suspected of providing financial backing to two of the hijackers. The suspect reportedly helped hijackers Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar, believed to have flown an American Airlines jet into the Pentagon. FBI agents are trying to retrace the steps of suspects Alhamzi and Al-Midhar during their time in San Diego last year. They are also are looking for traces of another suspect, Hani Hanjour, who is thought to have lived in San Diego last year. Agents have searched the home of Abdussattar Shaikh, a local Muslim leader who rented rooms to two of the men. The FBI says Shaikh is co-operating and is not a suspect.

FBI agents have requested records from flight schools in Corona del Mar and those clustered around John Wayne Airport in Orange County, outside Los Angeles.

At Boston's Logan airport, where 10 hijackers boarded two passenger planes, authorities have now seized three cars believed to have been used by the hijackers. Police found flight training manuals in one of the cars. FBI agents also raided a hotel in Newton, a Boston suburb, because two suspected hijackers, Waleed M. Alshehri and Wail Alshehri, are believed to have stayed there the night before the attacks.

Two suspected hijackers, Waleed M. Alshehri and Ahmed Alghamdi, apparently lived briefly in northern Virginia. Hamid Keshavarznia of Reston, Va., said he rented a room to Alshehri for a few months about two years ago at a Vienna home he owns. But Alshehri broke the lease, saying his father wanted him back in London.

One of the hijacking suspects, Hani Hanjour, flew three training flights from a suburban Washington flight school a month before allegedly helping crash the jet into the Pentagon. Hanjour paid $400 in cash for the flights in the single-engine Cessna 172, which didn't go over Washington airspace. Hanjour wanted to rent a plane to fly on his own, but the school required him to take flights with instructors before they would let him lease an aircraft, said the school's chief instructor, Marcel Bernard. Hanjour flew so poorly on the three flights that the school wouldn't let him rent a plane, said Bernard. Despite his struggles, Hanjour produced a valid pilot's licence and a log book showing 600 hours of flight time. Bernard said Hanjour had enough skill to fly a passenger jet already in the air.

FBI agents have visited several Arizona flight schools to seek information on Hanjour, who was on the jetliner that hit the Pentagon. Agents have also requested lists of students. CRM Airline Training Center in Scottsdale confirmed that a man with that name received pilot instruction for three months in 1996 and in December, 1997. The FBI said Hanjour lived in the Phoenix area during parts of at least the last two or three years. FAA records show a Hani Hanjour as holding a pilot's licence and listing a post office box in Saudi Arabia.

Residents of a middle-class neighbourhood in Scottsdale say FBI agents have been around asking if anyone has information about Hanjour. One agent told residents that, according to records, Hanjour lived there in 1996 and 1997, renting a room in one of the houses. ``It was sort of a boardinghouse, and from about 1992 to 1999, a lot of them appeared to be young Arab men,'' said neighbour Bob Gross.

A flight student, Zacarias Moussaoui, was arrested nearly a month before the terrorist attacks because an instructor at an Eagan, Minn., flight school became suspicious of his behaviour. Moussaoui reportedly offered cash to train on a flight simulator and was most interested in radio and flight maintenance operations and practicing in-flight turns. Moussaoui underwent entry-level training at an Oklahoma flight school but left in May without successfully completing the course. Moussaoui, arrested Aug. 17 on an immigration charge, was transferred from the Sherburne County Jail on Friday in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

In Oklahoma, FBI agents retrieved student records and interviewed administrators at a Tulsa flight school, and questioned officials at another flight school in Norman. One alleged hijacker, Fayez Ahmed, listed Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa as his address on his pilot's licence. School officials say they have no record that he attended.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With files from Star wire services

Friday, 21 September, 2001, 09:17 GMT 10:17 UK

Fighting a 'dirty war'

Bush may have to widen his powers to fight the war

By BBC world affairs correspondent William Horsley

In times of crisis, American leaders look to the Central Intelligence Agency to do their dirty work.

President George W Bush characterises his "war on terrorism" as a battle to maintain freedom.

The CIA and the FBI have used scoundrels and crooks for years
-- Jeffrey Smith, former CIA lawyer But he may be about to award himself special powers to order the deaths of his enemies abroad.

The CIA would again be called on to do the dirty work.

Meanwhile, the US Congress looks like baulking at proposals to enact radical changes to the law, to allow a clamp down on potential terrorists by giving government agencies sweeping extra powers.

'Dangerous business'

Following the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, US leaders fear that more terrorists are in hiding in the country, waiting perhaps to unleash even more terrible destruction using germ warfare or chemical weapons.

President Bush has declared Osama Bin Laden the prime suspect for last week's outrages, and declared him "wanted: dead or alive".

Bush says he wants Bin Laden at any price

He also said he would make "no distinction" between those who carried out the deadly attacks and governments which support or harbour terrorists.

Last Sunday US Vice-President Dick Cheney announced the determination of the US to strike back at terrorists who threaten America, using their own methods.

He said the US had no choice. It must launch into "the mean, nasty, dirty, dangerous business" of infiltrating terrorist networks, to try to eliminate them.

But what about the law? In 1976 President Gerald Ford signed an executive order prohibiting US leaders from ordering the assassination of foreign leaders.

But President George W Bush could rescind that order by himself any time he chooses.

Would that be politically astute? Probably not, say many policy experts in Washington.

Failed plots

The assassination ban was imposed in response to a series of Congressional inquiries which unearthed evidence of several CIA plots to kill foreign leaders, including the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

CIA agents tried to assassinate Fidel Castro several times

The CIA was also accused by its critics of backing the military coup which resulted in the death in 1973 of the elected left-wing leader of Chile, Salvador Allende.

The extent of the CIA's involvement remains a matter of debate.

At about the same time, the CIA was active in many states in Africa and Latin America, working to undermine left-wing regimes hostile to the US.

Their efforts often resulted in right-wing juntas coming to power which then suppressed civil rights and were responsible for widespread abuses of human rights.

In Vietnam and across Indochina at that time, working mostly in secret, the CIA played a key part in trying to counter the rising communist insurgency and to sustain in power leaders who would be pliable and friendly towards the US.

Their efforts failed, as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia fell like "dominoes" to the victorious communist armies.

Watergate

To many anti-war and civil rights leaders in the US, the final straw came with the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s.

America suffered a new trauma when it emerged that President Richard Nixon had ordered agents to break in to the Watergate Hotel in Washington, the election campaign headquarters of his Democratic rival.

Gerald Ford banned the killing of leaders abroad

Then the president abused the powers of the CIA and the FBI as he sought to cover up his involvement.

Opinion in the US is divided on the question: should the president have the right, in extreme cases, to order the death of an enemy abroad?

Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat, seemed in no doubt when he told the Senate that every means must be used to eliminate the ability of America's enemies to attack.

"If that means we have to have the authority to assassinate people before they can assassinate us, yes, we should free that stricture", he said.

Others suggest the letter of the law is irrelevant.

A former top CIA lawyer, Jeffrey Smith, told the BBC: "If the president so directed, the US could attack Osama Bin Laden and his headquarters, not to kill him but to use force. And if in the course of that he were to be killed, no-one would shed many tears."

Recruiting criminals

The question is also being asked: should the CIA be freed from existing restraints on employing unsavoury or even criminal individuals, in order to wage the "war against terrorism"?

(The CIA) never turned down a field request to recruit an asset in a terrorist organisation

Bill Harlow, CIA spokesman
Individuals with extraordinary skills and backgrounds are needed, to infiltrate terrorist cells or guerrilla movements.

Again, experts suggest that the secret services are not really constrained by present rules, which simply oblige them to record the known facts whenever they recruit someone with a dubious past.

The CIA's spokesman, Bill Harlow, said the CIA has "never turned down a field request to recruit an asset in a terrorist organisation".

And Jeffrey Smith, the former CIA lawyer who is a member of the prestigious US Council on Foreign Relations says: "The CIA and the FBI have used scoundrels and crooks for years."

What's more, says Mr Smith, by using these methods the US has successfully penetrated or exposed several terrorist networks and foiled a number of potentially deadly attacks on US cities in recent years.

The "dirty and dangerous" war is not new. But since the loss of more than 6,000 lives in the attacks on the US last week, it has grown more deadly.

All my Related threads on the terror attacks (Most have multiple stories on each):

Biological Attack Threat Real, but Small http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba7ea3f3d61.htm

Bin Laden Surrender Probably Not Enough..Rumsfeld (Why Remove Afgans' Incentive To Hand Him Over??) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba7dceb2427.htm

New Powers To Track Terror (& Powell Wants New CIA Rules, Assasinations,etc) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba5119f0b50.htm

Terrorist Moved Freely Across USA Using Real Name,On State Dept, INS &FBI Watch List-mytitle3stories http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba4fe966559.htm

How Did We Miss Enemies In Our Midst? http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba4812b2ba1.htm

FAA Attack Alert Failed to Reach Pentagon http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba44b1f0c9a.htm

Seven Pilots Were Among 19 Hijackers (Evidence Terrorist Operation Planned Attacks For 5 Years!) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba40c011fee.htm

CIA Reportedly Warned FBI About One Suspect (6 Stories of Prior Knowledge By FBI & Government) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba3756f074a.htm

FBI 'Ignored Leads' http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba232131410.htm

Iranian Man in Germany Warned of Attack (WasAllowed to Ring WhiteHouse &CIA,Wasn't TakenSerious) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba1c69709c5.htm

U.S. Gets Promise of Pakistani Cooperation http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba1c3340837.htm

How the World Trade Center Fell (Deadly Mistakes Made "I Would Have Given Order To Get Out!"Expert) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba1b16f79fa.htm

Ashcroft: 18 Hijackers Involved in Attack (How Could So Many CarryOut Plot Undetected?ClintonHelp?) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba141a25556.htm

(5)Suspects Caught Crashes on Camera (They Watched Crashes & Celebrated, Also Some Suspects Abroad) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba0e1b83f28.htm

FBI Looks at bin Laden's Strong Ties to Boston (Why Didn't They Look & Act Before?!!) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba02db8669d.htm

48 Iraqi & MidEasterns Caugh At Tightened Mexican Border Following U.S. Terrorist Attacks! http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba00b391f72.htm

ABC NEWS REPORTS 12 Plane HighJackers/Suspects Identified (Dead) & Arrest Warrants Issued For Others http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b9f8fbd7b5f.htm

Already Weak Airlines Stand to Lose Billions http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b9f18ae602c.htm

FBI Seizes 911 Tape (He Heard Some Sort of Explosion, Was It Shot Down Before Reaching Camp David?) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b9ee9762979.htm

B-25&767 Hit WTC,3 Planes Hit Pentagon, Bomb Near WhiteHouse,PittsBHit,Who Coordinated?,10000Die
(This thread has over 50 different news stories on it.) http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b9e390647f1.htm

Breaking: US Congress Subpoena Orders Ashcroft To Release Clinton Evidence on Sept. 11, 2001 http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b99d9b10b76.htm

-------------------------------------

3 follow-up threads to US Congress Subpoena Orders Ashcroft To Release Clinton Evidence on Sept. 11, 2001:

Breaking: US Congress Subpoena Orders Ashcroft To Release Clinton Evidence on Sept. 11, 2001 – Thread 2 http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b9a84661c0d.htm

Will Ashcroft Obey House Subpoena Commanding Evidence by11th or KeepProtecting Clinton?Thread 2 1/2 http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b9bd4a06221.htm

US Congress Subpoena Orders Ashcroft To Release Clinton Evidence on Sept. 11, 2001 - Re-Post http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3ba0411b092f.htm

U.S. Identified Some Elements of Hijack Plot in Advance September 21, 2001

New York Times

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta said today that his department knew elements of the threat to aviation before last week's terrorist attacks but could not have pieced them together to avert the plot.

In his first appearance before Congress since hijackers seized four jetliners and used them to kill more than 5,000 people, Mr. Mineta did not elaborate on what officials knew in advance, but he said that no one under his jurisdiction was at fault.

Members of the House and Senate agreed and warmly praised Mr. Minetta, who had served in the House from California for 21 years. They did not press him to elaborate and seemed more prone to blame the intelligence agencies for any responsibility the government must bear.

And they seemed most interested in getting the flying public back in the air, urging Mr. Mineta and his deputy, Jane Garvey, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, to reopen Ronald Reagan National Airport, across the Potomac from Washington, the only major airport in the country still closed.

Mr. Mineta said that since the attack, officials had studied "whether or not there was a matrix we could build," but that in hindsight, he did not see how they could have discovered the hijackings before they occurred. Ms. Garvey said the whole security system was geared for explosives, not knives.

The attack, she said, had "changed the way we think, and challenged every assumption," because before that day, no one had successfully seized a commercial jet as a weapon.
(The closest anyone came was a disgruntled FedEx employee riding in a FedEx cargo plane's cockpit who attacked the pilots with a hammer in 1994 and intended to crash the plane, but was thwarted.)

Despite extensive testimony from the Transportation Department's inspector general and a specialist from the General Accounting Office about a long history of failings in security — all of them documented over the years in reports to Congress — lawmakers said the nation was vulnerable because of lapses by intelligence agencies, whose representatives were not at the hearing.

"We could not expect an $8-an- hour security screener to foil an attack that a multibillion-dollar intelligence system could not prevent," said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington.

Mr. Mineta and Ms. Garvey testified before the Senate Commerce Committee and then in an unusual joint meeting of the House and Senate Transportation Appropriations Committees.

Each panel seemed most interested in returning aviation to normal levels of patronage. The number of commercial planes flying is nearly 80 percent of normal, but passenger loads are off by more than half.

Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said, "We are not going to get back on our feet unless people get back on the planes."

Mr. Mineta said he and Ms. Garvey were considering a "whistle-stop tour" by plane, holding news conferences at the airports to urge people to return to the skies.

When the two officials came under pressure to reopen Ronald Reagan National Airport, Mr. Mineta said that decision was not in his hands.

Senator Ernest F. Hollings, Democrat of South Carolina and chairman of the Commerce Committee, noted that the airport's closing was a particular problem for US Airways, which has a hub there and was in economic trouble before the hijackings. He then said, "While I'm palavering and dillying, I'm putting them out of business."

Mr. Mineta answered, "It's in the hands of the National Security Council and the Secret Service."

Senator Hollings retorted: "If it's in the Secret Service's hands, it'll never get open."

Mr. Mineta said those agencies wanted planes to approach the airport only from the south, and leave in that direction, too, so they would not fly over the Pentagon. That would mean the airport could operate only when there was hardly any wind, he said.

Another point of debate was over whether the federal government should take over operation of the 700 passenger screening checkpoints around the country. Mr. Mineta said that would require 28,000 people and an annual budget of around $1.8 billion; he said that the government would have to assure that a better job was done, but he said that the White House had not concluded that the government should do it.

Members of Congress also called for improvements in cockpit doors and other safety measures on planes, but got disappointing responses from expert witnesses. Capt. Duane Woerth, president of the Air Line Pilots Association and a member of a task force on cockpit security appointed by Mr. Mineta, was asked about arming cockpit crews and replied, "We can't be Sky King and Wyatt Earp at the same time."

"If we're already to the point that the bad guy is on the airplane, we've failed most of the systems to that point," Mr. Woerth said, calling for armed air marshals instead.

-----------

Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta told Congress on Thursday that officials had advance knowledge of some bits of the hijacking plot.
Susana Raab for The New York Times]

Embassy bombers' attorneys see similarities

September 21, 2001 Posted: 9:46 PM EDT (0146 GMT)

By Mike Fish

CNN.com

As authorities piece together the puzzle that is the team of terrorist hijackers, attorneys who represented some of those found guilty in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, see the fingerprints of Osama bin Laden's worldwide terrorist network in the attacks on Washington and New York.

The August 7, 1998, bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. Bin Laden, a dissident Saudi-born millionaire, was among those indicted by a U.S. District Court in New York, though he was never captured and remains atop the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.

Attorneys for the embassy bombers say it is highly unlikely, though, that their clients have any insight into the New York and Washington attacks.

"It is hard to tell the similarities from the front end, but from the back end you can see,'' said an attorney who asked not to be identified because his client still awaits sentencing. "It required a certain amount of money or financing. I don't know that somebody could come up with $20,000 to $25,000 for a pilot license.

"They've got four or five guys, maybe more, doing it. They all had (first-class) tickets. They all rented houses. It does add up, especially when it is a long-term project.

"And it involves people who operate locally. You look at the Nairobi bombings - they had Africans (who took part in the attack). And here they apparently had people who were in the country for a period of time.''

President George W. Bush has made it clear that bin Laden, head of the militant Islamic group Al-Qaeda, is the "prime suspect'' in the latest attacks that left more than 6,000 people dead or missing.

U.S. authorities believe a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations under bin Laden's influence are also responsible for the embassy attacks as well as for last October's bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

At least three men convicted last May in the embassy bombings acknowledged learning how to make explosives at Islamic militant training camps financed by bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Sentencing for the four convicted in the bombings was set for September 12, but prior to Labor Day it was delayed until October 18 -- and now faces another delay. Attorneys believe there is no connection between the September 11 attacks and the original sentencing date.

The attacks linked to Al-Qaeda make common use of "sleepers'' -- agents sent overseas to lie low while awaiting missions. In addition, the terrorists in many cases were relatively young and educated. Several studied or earned degrees in specialty fields like engineering and urban planning -- with bin Laden having earned a degree in civil engineering.

There was significant use of mail drops and post office boxes.

Anthony Ricco, who represented Mohamed Sadeeh Odeh, is struck by the fact that the embassy trials also unearthed that some connected to bin Laden were taking flight training courses and had ties to supporters in Germany.

"You had two informants testify that they took flight training,'' Ricco said. "One (Ihab Ali) testified that he went to flight school in Oklahoma, which is the same flight school as one of these fellows went to."

Ricco also noted the extensive contacts to Germany. "Some of the seeds were there, but it seems nobody focused in on them,'' he said.

Three who testified for the government are in the witness protection program, Ricco added.

Above all, those tied to the terrorist attacks were fanatical enough to enlist for, or at least accept, suicide missions.

"It speaks for itself,'' attorney David I. Bruck said of the similarities.

Bruck, a death penalty specialist, was a court-appointed attorney for Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali -- who expected to die a martyr in the Nairobi embassy bombing. According to a criminal complaint, al-'Owhali told the FBI he rode in the passenger seat of a bomb-laden van to the embassy in Nairobi and tossed a grenade at a guard outside.

"He was 19 when he went off to Afghanistan and 21 at the time of the crime,'' Bruck said. "He was in his second year of studying Islamic law. He was from a prosperous, middle-class family.

"He fit more the stereotype of a suicide bomber. I read ... about the people they're viewing now with some alarm, the fact that some of these guys had families and roots.''

The initial portrait of several terrorists living comfortable lives with their families, however, is now taking a hit as investigators suspect some hijackers may have used fake or stolen identification.

And in cases like this, authorities are baffled as to how to deter fanatics willing to detonate themselves into paradise.

"The irony of all this is the way that our country deals with acts such as this is to treat them through the criminal justice system,'' said Matthew Fishbein, former chief assistant U.S. attorney in New York. "And the ultimate penalty, the greatest penalty that can be imposed is a result that a number of these people were willing to face as part of their actions. When you're trying to think of how to deter actions like this, you wonder whether ultimately even a successful prosecution is going to accomplish that.''

Bruck successfully argued against the death penalty for al-'Owhali last year, claiming in part that it would make him a martyr in certain parts of the Muslim world and do nothing to deter terrorism.

He worries now that bin Laden is scheming to draw the U.S. and its supporters into a response that would rally a large segment of the Muslim world.

"It seems evident that the retaliation is what probably is the goal of bin Laden,'' Bruck said. "He doesn't assume we are going to retaliate, he is counting on our retaliation. If by some miracle we kill him, he goes to paradise. So that is not much of a deterrent.

"And if we don't manage to eliminate him, then he will exploit the aftermath of the strikes that he is counting. It instantly elevates him to the level of Nikita Khrushchev or Joseph Stalin, as sort of leader of a contending super power and the only other one in the world besides the United States.''

Bruck isn't sold on the idea of dealing with bin Laden through the U.S. judicial system, either, viewing him as a charismatic figure capable of turning political theater to his advantage outside the United States. He says it might be seen to outsiders as more legitimate if he was to stand before an international tribunal.

From his experience with the Nairobi bombing case, Bruck said he witnessed bin Laden enhance his support in the Muslim community after former President Clinton ordered missile strikes on Sudan in reprisals for the embassy bombing.

"I certainly heard from Islamists, who were overseas and were shocked by the embassy bombing,'' he said. "But then I saw all the political momentum shift back in bin Laden's direction as a result of the August missile strikes - the Monica (Lewinsky) strikes or whatever you call them.

"Bin Laden, politically, was bleeding because it was such a horrible incident and so many innocent African people had been slaughtered. It was very, very hard. That one was going to be hard to finesse for bin Laden. But then suddenly everything changed by the missile strike on the pharmaceutical factory.

"I can't help think our government remembers that and knows that. But there are lot of contending pressures and lot of outrage and hurt that may have to find some outlet.

"The defining of this new age was not the (New York and Washington) bombings. It is what happens in the next few days and weeks.''

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