Sept. 11 probe raises likelihood, questions of another attack
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| The World Trade Center was photographed from a commuter ferry on the Hudson River in March 2000. Today, investigators continue large-scale surveillance to learn how hijackers brought the towers down, and how al-Qaida will strike next.
Associated Press |
| • | Sept. 11 anniversary events |
By Toni Locy, Kevin Johnson and Richard Willing
USA Today
Since he was captured five months ago in Pakistan, al-Qaida operations chief Abu Zubaydah has been cast as the biggest catch in the worldwide terrorism investigation that began Sept. 11. His hints about future attacks have led U.S. officials to issue several terrorism alerts, even though they weren't sure he was telling the truth.
Now it's clear that Zubaydah's real importance stems not from what he has said, but from the computer hard drives, CD-ROMs and documents the FBI and CIA found in his rented house in Faisalabad, Pakistan.
The records have reshaped the terrorism probe in the United States, where at least 200 people with suspected ties to al-Qaida now are under surveillance.
More than any other evidence, Zubaydah's stockpile of records has moved the investigation beyond U.S. officials' random roundup of more than 1,200 people — mostly Middle Easterners accused of immigration violations.
Most of those under surveillance across the nation are permanent U.S. residents, foreign nationals allowed to stay here because they have relatives or employers who have vouched for them. U.S. law enforcement officials say the emergence of permanent residents' names in the Sept. 11 probe suggests al-Qaida could have a foothold here.
The officials say seizure of what amounts to al-Qaida's corporate records has given them a deeper understanding of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, shedding light on its potential to attack this country again while raising troubling questions about how and when.
The leads generated by Zubaydah's records are largely responsible for investigators' obsession with preventing another attack on U.S. soil — and their grim confidence that one is coming. Among the key findings:
• As many as 20,000 men trained in al-Qaida terrorist camps are scattered across the globe, and investigators fear many of them could enter the United States to carry out attacks. Investigators say the large number of trainees leads them to believe another attack is inevitable. They are particularly concerned about security gaps along the Canadian border.
• The 19 hijackers who pulled off the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon had no support network in the United States. Their mission was designed to avoid leaving behind potential witnesses, a mistake that al-Qaida learned from in earlier attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa. Senior law enforcement officials believe key details, such as the lineup of terrorists on the four hijacked jets, were devised overseas.
• Investigators suspect the hijackers took advantage of U.S. policies that limit surveillance on houses of worship by using mosques from Florida to California to communicate with each other and possibly with superiors overseas. The hijackers avoided mosques with radical reputations; officials say mosque members likely were unaware their visitors were planning the attacks.
Less than two months after Zubaydah's arrest, U.S. officials announced policy changes that gave FBI agents unprecedented authority to spy on religious groups. Details in Zubaydah's records also allowed authorities to take advantage of legislation approved last fall by Congress that permits evidence gathered in intelligence probes to be used in criminal investigations. To the concern of many Arabs and Muslims, greater scrutiny of U.S. mosques has become part of authorities' efforts to stop future attacks.
Unanswered questions
For all their progress, U.S. investigators are far from answering many basic questions about the Sept. 11 attacks. Among them:
• When did the planning begin? The FBI believes the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, polished in Germany and paid for through al-Qaida operatives in the United Arab Emirates. But parts of the timeline remain murky.
• Who gave final approval? Officials believe the key to predicting what al-Qaida will do next depends on understanding how the plot was developed and whether the mastermind remains at large.
• Why did lead hijacker Mohamed Atta and another hijacker put the mission at risk by traveling to Portland, Maine, on Sept. 10? Some FBI officials believe Atta received a final "go" signal for the attacks while in Portland. Others aren't so certain.
• Was Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen facing trial in Virginia on terrorism conspiracy charges, part of the plot? Or was the former flight student on a different mission when he was arrested for visa violations just before the attacks? Law enforcement officials say an FBI analysis of the hijackers' e-mails in the months before the attacks suggests they were not waiting on a 20th person to join them.
• Where was United Airlines Flight 93 headed when it crashed in Pennsylvania? FBI officials suspect the target was the White House or U.S. Capitol, because the hijacked jet was headed toward Washington and attacks were directed at symbols of U.S. power. But officials may never know for sure.
"The pieces we're looking for could come from the caves in Afghanistan or searches in Pakistan," said James Osterrieder, the FBI's supervisory agent in Portland. "Until we find those pieces, we're going to keep looking."
Treasure or fool's gold?
A rising star in al-Qaida, Zubaydah, 31, ran its terrorist training camps. He became military operations chief after Mohammed Atef, one of bin Laden's top aides, was killed in November in Afghanistan. Zubaydah, the highest-ranking al-Qaida member in custody, is questioned daily at a secret location, U.S. officials say.
His records have helped U.S. authorities evaluate interviews with the 598 al-Qaida and Taliban detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A U.S. law enforcement official said "bits and pieces" of information from the detainees have made sense after being compared with Zubaydah's records.
Most of all, Zubaydah's records have given the FBI desperately needed leads, as top officials struggle to defend the bureau against allegations it missed several signals about an impending attack.
This spring, agents sorted through the records to try to determine whether they were a treasure or fool's gold. With evidence generated by the records, FBI agents and Justice Department lawyers often have worked past midnight, preparing requests for warrants to conduct secret surveillance of possible al-Qaida members or supporters across the United States.
The warrants, issued under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, permit monitoring of suspected agents of a foreign power or terrorist group. The act authorizes the most intrusive surveillance permitted in this country, allowing listening devices to gather evidence that the government can keep secret forever.
To get the warrants, agents must link suspects to a foreign power. Sometimes that has been difficult, because Zubaydah's records lacked such proof. A bill before Congress would allow agents to make the links after they conduct surveillance.
Officials say the list of those being watched by the FBI changes almost daily as some people are eliminated and others are added.
Because most of those under surveillance are permanent U.S. residents, they are less likely to commit technical immigration violations — such as overstaying a visa — that have been used to hold indefinitely hundreds of people for questioning. If FBI agents can't link suspicious permanent residents to a foreign power or find irregularities in their immigration status, the agents must try to catch them committing a crime.
On Wednesday, U.S. authorities began to reveal the scope of their efforts to crack down on terrorism supporters in the United States, with indictments of Earnest James Ujaama in Seattle and five men in Michigan. Ujaama, a U.S. citizen, was charged with conspiring to aid al-Qaida by recruiting and training operatives here. The five others — immigrants who initially were held on fraud charges — were accused of helping terrorists get fake travel and identification documents.
Although the Sept. 11 probe's focus now is the home front, more than two dozen countries, including some in the Middle East, quietly are helping to track al-Qaida leaders. In Germany on Wednesday, a Moroccan was charged with supporting the Hamburg cell that authorities say produced three of the Sept. 11 pilots. Another man, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, an al-Qaida recruiter in Hamburg, is in Syrian custody and providing information to U.S. agents.
But authorities worry more about the 10,000 to 20,000 men who learned the dark arts of hijacking and suicide bombing at al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and the Sudan. Investigators hope Zubaydah's records will help them identify and track down the most dangerous trainees before they can enter the United States.
The FBI says it has never faced a more disciplined opponent than al-Qaida. "They are a heck of a lot smarter than the Mafia," one top FBI official says.
Created in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, the radical Islamic group is blamed for attacks on U.S. soldiers in Somalia in 1993, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 and the assault on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. Some U.S. investigators believe al-Qaida was involved in the 1993 attack on the Trade Center.
Unlike many criminal networks, al-Qaida seems to learn from its mistakes. Some FBI officials believe the group identified flaws in the 1993 Trade Center garage bombing that killed six people, then developed a more effective attack.
Investigators say it also appears bin Laden's group learned from the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. There, al-Qaida had a large support network, with operatives renting houses and buying bomb parts.
By contrast, the hijackers handled all the Sept. 11 plot's details themselves, U.S. officials say. "What did they need?" said a top U.S. law enforcement official. "The ability to fly? They got that in flight training here. Money? They got that coming in from overseas. They had enough English to rent cars and apartments. And they had the discipline to stay out of trouble."
In Africa, a few al-Qaida operatives ignored orders to leave the countries before the bombings. They were arrested, became witnesses in terrorism trials and gave the FBI much of what it knows about al-Qaida.
The error was not repeated Sept. 11. "Twenty-three or so people were indicted in East Africa," the senior official says. "With Sept. 11, we had 19 dead subjects."
Several top FBI officials say they believe the only significant change in the plot occurred when fugitive Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, a Yemeni cleric, failed to get a visa to enter the United States in 2000. The officials believe that early in the plot he was designated as the 20th hijacker, but the group went ahead without him when he couldn't get in to the country. Bin al-Shibh later sent money to some hijackers and to Moussaoui from Germany.
Investigators say they have found no link between the hijackers and Moussaoui, 34, who faces the death penalty when he goes on trial in January.
Shortly after Sept. 11, authorities suggested he might have been planning a chemical attack using a crop-dusting plane. They issued two terrorism alerts concerning crop-dusters. But prosecutors have removed references in Moussaoui's indictment that linked him and Atta to crop-dusting.
Investigators say they have no evidence that the hijackers told anyone about their plot. Aside from a few traffic tickets, they apparently didn't commit a crime until one of them slashed a passenger's throat during the takeover of American Airlines Flight 11, the first jet to hit the Trade Center.
Infiltrating mosques
Above all, U.S. investigators say, the hijackers seemed to understand this nation's commitment to civil liberties.
Investigators suspect that some hijackers attended mosques near where they were living in Florida and California because they knew U.S. agents wouldn't follow them there. The hijackers "knew the mosques were out of bounds, and they used them accordingly," a senior investigator says.
On a humid evening this month, an unmarked police car pulled into the parking lot of a computer store in a Miami suburb. An unremarkable building next door that housed a storefront mosque was the investigators' target. Armed with a state police "hot list" of vehicles linked to terror suspects, they examined license plates. The investigators suspect a mosque member has been recruiting for al-Qaida in America.
Under U.S. policies imposed in the 1970s to curb abuses in gathering intelligence on high-profile Americans such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., FBI agents couldn't go near mosques or churches unless they had evidence of a crime. But in May, Attorney General John Ashcroft relaxed the rules to allow agents or informants to develop intelligence by infiltrating houses of worship.
U.S. officials say the new policy is not designed to target mosques, but the FBI is focusing on mosques as never before.
In San Diego, suburban Washington, D.C., New Jersey and beach towns north of Miami, agents repeatedly have interviewed prayer leaders and worshippers at mosques that some hijackers are believed to have attended. Some mosques have been targeted for continued surveillance; authorities won't say which ones.
The new tactics, along with efforts to stop terrorism funding by freezing the assets of several Muslim charities, worry civil libertarians and Arab-Americans.
"Before and after Sept. 11, we've been saying to the FBI, 'We'll work with you, just let us know what you need.' But don't come from behind us," said Sofeian Abdelaziz of the American Muslim Association of North America, in Miami.
By attending mosques, the hijackers violated tenets of an al-Qaida handbook confiscated by authorities before Sept. 11. It tells terrorists working undercover in the West to "avoid visiting famous Islamic places" such as mosques. But the hijackers used mosques not just as communication safe houses, but also to learn about jobs, housing and restaurants.
After arriving in California in January 2000, hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar joined the Islamic Center in San Diego, where they met fellow Muslims who helped them find an apartment and buy a car.
In Falls Church, Va., Alhazmi and another hijacker, Hani Hanjour, visited the Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Center in the spring of 2001. One congregation member told them about a Chinese restaurant in northern New Jersey that served Muslim-approved meat.
The FBI says it believes they also frequented at least one mosque there.
Officials will not say whether FBI agents or informants have infiltrated any mosques under the new surveillance rules. But an immigration lawyer in South Florida says the FBI offered to help one of his clients avoid deportation if he worked undercover in a mosque.
Why Portland?
An enduring mystery of the Sept. 11 plot is why Atta and hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari went to Portland on Sept. 10. After interviewing more than 2,000 people in New England and checking miles of videotape from security cameras, authorities believe none of the hijackers previously had been to the coastal city of 63,400.
That finding has added to a lingering question: Why would Atta, the leader of such a tightly knit unit, jeopardize the mission by driving from Boston to Portland with Alomari, spending the night and then catching an early morning flight back to Boston, where they boarded the jet that would be the first to hit the Trade Center?
On Sept. 11, Atta and Alomari checked out of the Comfort Inn just 27 minutes before their 6 a.m. flight back to Boston. The drive to Portland's airport is only about a mile. The pair made the drive and abandoned their rental car before they were taped going through airport security at 5:45 a.m.
Still, "it makes you wonder whether something as simple as a fogged-in airport here or a flat tire there could have derailed the whole thing," said Portland Police Chief Michael Chitwood. "It's a big, big question."
Some FBI officials in Washington theorize that Atta had to get a final go-ahead from someone to carry out the attacks. Agents have checked records of border crossings and ferry travel between Portland and Nova Scotia. But they have found no proof that Atta got a signal or met with a terrorist operative, said Osterrieder, the FBI's top agent in Portland.
"Was there a contact person up here that we did not see at first? We will never be able to rule that in or out until we get some definitive material to support it."
For now, the only reliable evidence of the hijackers' visit to Portland are credit card receipts and grainy images captured on security cameras from local businesses. Investigators say Atta and Alomari checked into a second-floor nonsmoking room at the Comfort Inn at 5:43 p.m. on Sept. 10. Their activities, said Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion, did nothing to betray their plans.
"Maybe engaging in pedestrian things was part of the cover," Dion said. "Then again, I've never been on a suicide mission. On the night before you die, why in hell do you go to Wal-Mart?"
At 9:22 p.m. on Sept. 10, that's what Atta and Alomari did. Some investigators think they went for haircuts at the store's salon, which was closed. The theory is based on al-Qaida manuals that urge operatives to be well-groomed to avoid raising suspicion.
The training manuals also have given authorities another theory: Al-Qaida tells its operatives that when launching an operation, they should leave from low-profile transportation centers. But that leads investigators back to this: Why didn't any of the hijackers, who took several "practice" flights, ever bother to go to Portland if it were crucial to the plan?
"We just don't know," Dion said.
Connecting the dots
For the FBI, the most persistent questions flowing from Sept. 11 are whether it could have done anything to prevent the attacks, and whether the bureau has learned enough to prevent or stop another assault.
Weaknesses in the government's counterintelligence capabilities exposed by last year's attacks still shadow the probe and homeland defense efforts.
Long before an FBI agent's pre-Sept. 11 memo raising concerns about Middle Easterners training at Arizona flight schools was dismissed by superiors, there were warnings that al-Qaida was planning attacks here.
In August 1998, after the Africa attacks, a surviving bomber told FBI special agent Stephen Gaudin about a chilling conversation he had with al-Qaida's leader in Nairobi. The agent testified last year in federal court that the cell leader told bomber Mohamed Al-'Owhali that al-Qaida had targets in America. "Things are not ready yet," the cell leader told Al-'Owhali. "We don't have everything prepared."
In July 2001, Ahmed Ressam, convicted in a plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, testified that Zubaydah was trying to get Canadian passports for terrorists assigned to attack this country.
FBI officials say the clues likely would not have allowed them to stop last year's attacks. But some congressional leaders are skeptical.
Second-guessing on Capitol Hill and pressure to thwart another attack have created battle fatigue among investigators as fears about another al-Qaida mission rise.
In communities touched by the mysteries of Sept. 11, shock has become anger.
"Slowly, the horror has receded," Portland Mayor Karen Geraghty said. "But people are galled that these terrorists operated in our midst. What's worse is that we didn't know."
