Posted on 10/14/2004 12:39:20 PM PDT by Shermy
A senior al-Qaida operative lived in New Jersey and posed as a student to disguise his surveillance of financial institutions as possible terror targets, officials said Wednesday.
The FBI's top agent in New Jersey, Joseph Billy Jr., confirmed that the operative led an al-Qaida mission to survey the physical layout and assess weaknesses of the Prudential Financial Inc. building in downtown Newark.
While carrying out this reconnaissance operation - which included surveys of the New York Stock Exchange building on Wall Street and Citigroup's headquarters in midtown Manhattan - the man attended several institutions of higher learning in New Jersey, Billy said. He did not identify the schools.
The operative used his pursuit of higher education as a "cover" and entered the United States on a student visa, said another law enforcement official familiar with the case.
The development Wednesday marks the third time authorities have publicly confirmed that al-Qaida operatives used North Jersey as a base to launch terror strikes or to assess potential targets of attack.
The man in the most recent case, identified by U.S. officials in Washington as Dhiren Barot, is a senior al-Qaida figure who was dispatched by the group's leader, Osama bin Laden, to conduct the scouting operation, according to American interrogations of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Barot, who is being held in a high-security prison in Britain, used the aliases Abu Eisa al-Hindi, Abu Musa al-Hindi and Issa al-Britani, officials said.
British authorities have charged Barot, 32, with possessing reconnaissance plans for the Prudential building in Newark, the New York Stock Exchange and the Citigroup building, as well as for the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C.
Discovery of those surveys led U.S. Homeland Security officials to declare an orange alert Aug. 1 for America's financial sector, prompting banks in New Jersey to tighten their security and law enforcement officials to increase their vigilance.
Authorities later concluded the buildings were not under threat of imminent attack.
Among the information assembled by the al-Qaida reconnaissance mission was a description of a visit to Newark City Hall by an operative seeking blueprints for the Prudential building, an official familiar with the matter said. That effort was unsuccessful, the official said.
The al-Qaida operative noted in his written report that the City Hall employees were polite in their denials that such documents were kept in the building, prompting the operative to suspect that the city workers were lying, the official said.
The al-Qaida survey report contained myriad details about the Prudential building and its environs, including an observation that a van carrying explosives probably would not fit into its subterranean garage. The report recommended using limousines instead, the official said.
A survey of potential getaway routes that would be used after an attack on the building was contained in the report and included a description of the New Jersey Transit trains that operate along the Northeast Corridor line within view of the building, the official said.
One notation said that using the PATH train system was an option, but pointed out that exact fare should be carried for use at its automated turnstiles to speed a getaway, the official said.
These escape plans have suggested to law enforcement officials in New Jersey that an attack on the Prudential building might not have involved the suicide tactics used by al-Qaida in the Sept. 11 attacks and in several of the group's other operations, officials said.
U.S. counterterrorism officials have said they think Barot, who used dozens of aliases, authored the al-Qaida reports, which were written in fluent English.
The documents describe surveillance operations at U.S. financial buildings during 2000 and 2001, and were discovered on computers, discs and in e-mail messages during a raid in Pakistan in July. Pakistani authorities arrested Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a computer engineer who is also a suspected member of al-Qaida, U.S. and Pakistani officials have said.
Investigators later found photographs, maps and other details of possible targets in the United States and Britain on computers that belonged to Khan and to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian indicted for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, officials said. Ghailani also was arrested in Pakistan, they said.
Shortly after the arrests in Pakistan, officials in the United States ordered the orange alert. Two days later, on Aug. 3, British police conducted raids that grew out of the Pakistan case and charged Barot and seven others with conspiring to commit murder and use radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals or explosives to cause "fear or injury."
New Jersey has been used by terrorists before.
In 2001, a number of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived in a Paterson apartment and a Wayne motel while making their final preparations for the attacks.
Among them were several pilots who flew the hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.
And the plotters of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center lived in Jersey City before the attack.
Ping.
Damn nuisances!
Lets see. Baby.....bathwater.....throw them both out.
I imagine they went to Rutgers-Newark or NJIT or Essex Community College. All are located very near the Prudential Bldg...less than 1/2 mile.
Ping.
Thanks for the ping. In case you missed it, there are a couple of additional links here that you might be interested in from related thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1244716/posts
Ping.
Gotta wonder how many of those "scouts" the NJ Dem party has registered to vote?
thanks for the ping
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