Published: 9/25/01
GREG B. SMITH
Terrorist told of plan to crash into CIA's HQ
Two years ago, federal prosecutors turned down a cooperation offer from a terrorist who claimed he was part of a well-financed 1995 plot to crash an airplane into the CIA headquarters.
Abdul Hakim Murad said he got his pilot's license after training at several American flight schools, including one that is now under scrutiny in the terror investigation. Murad was convicted in 1996 for his role in a highly choreographed scheme to blow up 12 U.S.-bound jetliners flying out of Southeast Asia.
The Pakistani-born man said that in addition to the jetliner bomb plot, he and his co-conspirators were looking into using his flying skills to crash an aircraft into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.
"It was not something that we focused on. It was something that he said," recalled Dietrich Snell, the ex-prosecutor who convicted Murad. "We took seriously what he was telling us, but what we were focused on was the plot to blow up the 12 airliners."
U.S. Attorney Said No Deal
Snell, who left office in 1998, did not recall Murad coming forward to offer information in return for leniency in sentencing. But court papers and two sources familiar with the situation confirm that Murad did try to cooperate with Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White's office. He was turned down, the sources said.
It's not clear whether Murad's claims of a plan to fly a jet into the CIA buildings have any ties to the Sept. 11 attack on America. Murad gave investigators information that both resembles and bears no resemblance to the Sept. 11 attack.
His plan to blow up jetliners collapsed when bomb-making chemicals that he and his co-conspirator, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, were mixing caught on fire inside a Manila apartment.
Murad was captured in January 1994 in Manila, where he told Philippine interrogators about a plot he called "bojinka," or "big sound." In that scheme, he, Yousef and at least 10 others planned to get off the planes at stops along the planes' routes. The bombs would be detonated by timers in sequence over the Pacific, and none of the terrorists would be killed.
Got Pilot Training Upstate
"The whole crux of bojinka was to have timed explosions and the operatives to be off the flights and escaping," Snell said. "That's a fundamental difference between what happened two weeks ago at the World Trade Center and bojinka."
But there are similarities. Snell recalled that Murad told investigators about the suicide mission to crash a plane into the CIA building. "I remember him saying he thought about maybe getting a small plane or somehow get access to a small plane and crash it into the CIA," Snell said, adding, "There was never any mention of hijacking." And Murad noted that he got his commercial pilot's license after training at several U.S. flight schools, including ones in upstate Schenectady and North Carolina.
Last week, FBI agents showed up at the same Schenectady flight school, asking questions about a student who trained there. And several of the suspected hijackers are believed to have studied at flight schools around the U.S.
Snell said he has no way to know whether Murad could have provided investigators with information that would be relevant to the probe of the Sept. 11 attack. "I think it's pretty unlikely, but I don't know," he said. "I'd be guessing like everyone else."