Posted on 03/04/2003 5:28:48 AM PST by Pharmboy
WASHINGTON, March 3 — For months, Pakistani and American intelligence had picked up clues that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was in Pakistan organizing what he hoped would be a spectacular new attack, officials of both countries said. On Feb. 13, when Pakistani authorities raided an apartment in Quetta, they got the break they needed.
They had hoped to find Mr. Mohammed, but he had fled the apartment, eluding the authorities, as he had on numerous occasions. Instead, they found and arrested Muhammad Abdel Rahman, a son of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who in 1995 was convicted along with 10 followers for conspiring to blow up the United Nations headquarters and other New York buildings, bridges and tunnels — as an extension of the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.
Under interrogation, Mr. Rahman told police that Mr. Mohammed had also lived at the address. Information from Mr. Rahman and a fresh trail of cellphone messages and other clues allowed the authorities to follow Mr. Mohammed's trail from Quetta. They quickly tracked him to Rawalpindi, where he was captured without incident in the predawn hours of Saturday.
Today, intelligence officials expressed optimism, but not certainty, that Mr. Mohammed's arrest would breathe life into the search for Osama bin Laden. Some officials said they suspected that Mr. Mohammed knew the whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden, who is thought to be alive and in hiding, possibly in the wildly remote region encompassing parts of the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"Could he help us find bin Laden?" said one intelligence official, referring to Mr. Mohammed. "Sure, if he wants to."
Michael Chertoff, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, called the arrest "a landmark victory" in the campaign against terrorism.
The smooth precision of the endgame in the hunt for Mr. Mohammed, one of the most anxiously sought of all leaders of Al Qaeda, contrasts sharply with the uneven trajectory of the worldwide manhunt for Mr. bin Laden and his second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Since September 2001, the pair has successfully eluded efforts by the United States and more than 100 countries to bring them to justice.
The capture of Mr. Mohammed was accomplished without bloodshed, unlike the shootouts that resulted in the capture of other top Qaeda lieutenants, Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
The arrests in Rawalpindi also yielded another significant figure in the Qaeda network, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who investigators have said provided cash to Mohamed Atta for the 19 hijackers through bank accounts in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Shortly before the hijackings, Mr. Atta sent Mr. Hawsawi unspent funds that the hijackers did not need.
Mr. Mohammed's arrest has already resulted in a spike in communications traffic among Islamic militants, officials said, that has been monitored by American eavesdropping agencies. The officials said they hoped those conversations would yield fresh hints to the whereabouts of other top Qaeda suspects, possibly including Mr. bin Laden.
Moreover, the officials said that if Mr. Mohammed could be forced to cooperate with intelligence agencies, he could provide them with the details of Al Qaeda's recruitment plans, financing methods and, most importantly, its current operational plans in the United States and elsewhere.
In addition, several officials said they were still evaluating the evidence seized during Mr. Mohammed's arrest, including cellphones, computers, discs and documents, which authorities hope could lead to more arrests of Qaeda lieutenants who reported to Mr. Mohammed as well as clues about the whereabouts of the upper echelon of Al Qaeda's hierarchy.
"You've got two things to work with in a case like this," said one senior counterterrorism official. "You've got what's in his mind and what they found on the floor. Many of these guys are pack rats, and in that event he should be one of those people who is very helpful."
Even as details of the arrest continued to trickle out, senior Bush administration officials triumphantly declared that the arrest had badly damaged the bin Laden terror network.
"The truth be told, I was ecstatic when we got the son of a gun," Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said at a meeting with reporters.
But Mr. Ridge warned that Al Qaeda remained a potent terror force capable of striking inside the United States through lieutenants of Mr. bin Laden's who remain at large.
"We cannot overestimate his importance to the Al Qaeda terrorist organization," he said, referring to Mr. Mohammed. "But we shouldn't underestimate the continuing abilities that he has helped develop around the world."
Mr. Ridge said Mr. Mohammed had been trying to activate a terror plot against a target inside the United States, a plan that contributed significantly to the government's decision last month to rachet up the terrorist threat alert level from yellow to orange, a status that has since been rescinded. Mr. Ridge called it "a significant terrorist plot," but would not discuss any details.
"There was one plot line that we were able to connect with him that related to a potential terrorist attack during the time that this whole thing was being discussed," Mr. Ridge said. Asked if the attack was planned for the United States, Mr. Ridge replied simply, "Yes."
The plot to which Mr. Ridge appeared to be referring, officials said, involved newly received intelligence indicating that Mr. Mohammed was trying to set in motion a large-scale attack against an unspecified target in the United States, perhaps involving fuel trucks, gas stations and bridges. Mr. Mohammed had considered trying to attack such targets before Sept. 11.
Intelligence analysts, who played an important role in the decision to raise the threat level, coupled that information with another, older report provided by a senior Qaeda detainee, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a close associate of Mr. Mohammed's who also played a significant role in the planning for the trade center hijackings.
Mr. bin al-Shbih, the officials said, told the authorities that in 2001 Mr. Mohammed had discussed using fuel tanker trucks to blow up gas stations and that he had talked about destroying suspension bridges in New York City. That plan was abandoned, but the analysts linked the 2001 plot with more recent threats to conclude that Mr. Mohammed was bent on striking again in Manhattan.
Today, officials described Mr. Mohammed as an anti-American extremist who has been on the run from American authorities since the mid-1990's. He was first sought in connection with a 1995 plot, based in the Philippines, to blow up American airliners over the Pacific Ocean.
Since then he has repeatedly avoided capture, often narrowly eluding American intelligence agencies. Sometimes, he seemed to live openly and even flamboyantly, visiting nightclubs and staying in world-class hotels.
Some investigators believed he might be taunting them, allowing his pursuers brief glimpses of his whereabouts before dropping out of sight. He moved continuously to avoid detection, communicated frequently with ever-present cellphones and through a network of intermediaries who carried messages to and from other Qaeda leaders.
Besides eluding authorities in Quetta, Mr. Mohammed narrowly escaped capture last September, when Mr. bin al-Shibh was arrested after a shootout in Karachi. Mr. Mohammed had been in hiding with Mr. bin al-Shibh, and Mr. Mohammed's two young sons were taken into captivity after the shootout. Some officials said the fate of his sons might be used as leverage to try to pry information from him, although a senior American intelligence official said children would not be brought into the interrogation process.
His sometimes frantic level of activity and wide circle of associates seemed to define Mr. Mohammed as one of Al Qaeda's most important operations leaders, but those very qualities appeared to have contributed to his undoing. Today, several officials suggested that investigators were able to focus precisely on Mr. Mohammed's movements through his cellphone communications and by tips from one or more of his associates, including some under arrest in Pakistan on terrorism charges.
He had advanced technical knowledge about secret communications. When a correspondent for the Arabic-language television network Al Jazeera went to interview him last fall, Mr. Mohammed quickly dismantled the correspondent's cellphone so that their whereabouts could not be traced.
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