Posted on 04/04/2004 3:54:10 AM PDT by demkicker
April 4, 2004, 1:17AM
City's Terror Threats Probed
Thousands of leads keep Houston task force busy
By CINDY HORSWELL
• Possible threats VULNERABILITY Houston is considered one of eight U.S. cities most vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack because of:
• A porous Gulf of Mexico coastline and border with Mexico
• A petrochemical industry that holds the military's contract for fuel and supplies 50 percent of the nation's gasoline
• The Texas Medical Center
• NASA's Johnson Space Center
• A nuclear power plant in Bay City
• One of the nation's largest ports
• An international airport named for former President Bush, making it a symbolic target
• More foreign consulates (60) than any city other than New York and Washington, D.C.
In a small South Texas town, an illegal immigrant managing a convenience store aroused suspicion by asking customers about explosives -- enough to detonate several city blocks. Investigators said he was also collecting photos of skyscrapers, including ones in Houston.
In Corpus Christi, investigators found 30 illegal immigrants from the Middle East hidden in the bowels of a large ship. The stowaways refused to say why they had come.
And in The Woodlands, the owner of a $350,000 house is about to be sentenced for leading a double life as an arms dealer for terrorists.
Quietly and without fanfare, teams of lawmen from federal, state and local agencies have banded together to probe these and other incidents they believe could lead to terrorism. The number of such task forces grew rapidly after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon to nearly 70 nationwide, including four in Texas.
"We've followed thousands of leads. We get them daily," said Richard Powers, the FBI agent in charge of Houston's Joint Terrorism Task Force. "Ninety-nine percent turn out to be invalid, but I believe we have also prevented things."
Two floors of the FBI headquarters in Houston are devoted to task force operations, giving members a round-the-clock base where they can access secure telephones and computers.
The Houston task force comprises 100 members from 40 agencies. They include FBI agents, a police officer from Baytown and a detective from Texas A&M University. All are subject to background checks and are given top-secret clearance. They spend the bulk of their time following tips but also network with other intelligence sources.
"They see the most sensitive secrets we have," Powers said, "like a fire hose of intelligence."
Local police have been sent to the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to interview Taliban and al-Qaida detainees, though Powers declined to elaborate on the missions.
"They went to get names and intelligence about possible cells to disrupt," he said.
Most leads don't have serious consequences. A year ago, for instance, a suspicious box reported under the Fred Hartman Bridge over the Houston Ship Channel contained nothing more sinister than a dead cat.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Abe Martinez, who serves on the local task force and is chief of the regional Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council, said the group thwarted attempts by suspected terrorists to cross the Mexican border into Texas.
In one, a few days after the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, task force members received intelligence that five Iraqis in Mexico City wanted to exchange millions of dinars for U.S. currency and find a smuggler to bring them across the border near Laredo, officials said.
They were believed to be planning an assault on President Bush's Crawford ranch, where they "wanted to blow something up," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Porto, another task force member.
The smuggler they approached sought help from two people with links to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, which has been named a foreign terrorist organization, Martinez said.
"The threat was interrupted and went away," he said. "I can't say how."
Another tip triggered a task force investigation of a convenience store owner in Alice who was seeking explosives and collecting photos of tall buildings. Muhammad Navid Asrar is now in federal prison after pleading guilty to being an undocumented immigrant in illegal possession of 50 rounds of 9 mm bullets, records show.
Asrar, a Pakistani who overstayed his student visa, denied any connection to terrorists, and investigators said they could not prove what he intended to do with the photographs.
However, FBI Agent David Troutman has testified that Asrar remains the subject of an investigation.
"Besides trying to purchase explosives from an oil field worker, Asrar had made donations to the Holy Land Foundation," Martinez said. A federal appeals court in 2003 ruled that the U.S. Treasury Department had ample evidence connecting the Texas-based foundation to a terrorist group blamed for orchestrating suicide bombings in Israel.
Intentionally false tips also are prosecuted vigorously.
Last year, Bill Taylor of Dickinson was sentenced to eight months in prison for making two 911 calls to falsely report that a bomb was planted at the Port of Houston, and Solange Villegas Bedoza of Colombia was given three years supervised probation for falsely reporting her live-in lover was plotting with terrorists to put cyanide in a water treatment plant in Houston.
The other task forces based in Texas are in Dallas, San Antonio and El Paso. Houston's task force was the first in the state and one of the few in the nation already in place before the Sept. 11 attacks, Powers said. Houston's was created a few weeks before the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
Ahmad M. Ajaj, one of four men later sentenced to life in prison for the bombing, once made his home in Houston, records show.
Martinez said Houston now is viewed as one of eight U.S. cities most vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack.
"It is the only area in the U.S. with critical infrastructure in all risk categories," he added.
Houston also has the nation's second-largest Muslim population, numbering 350,000, and 80 mosques, Martinez said. Yet investigators are quick to stress that they do not use a broad brush to target Middle Easterners.
"We're here to protect them, too," Powers said. "I've investigated more than 100 hate crimes against Muslims since 9/11."
The Council on American Islamic Relations, an Islamic civil rights group, agrees to a point. Council spokeswoman Rabiah Ahmed said that while the FBI is doing important outreach in the fight against hate crimes, the agency is sometimes guilty of "profiling and unequal treatment of Muslims."
Muslims do not want to be treated as if they are guilty until proven innocent, Ahmed said, based solely on rumors or suspicions.
Martinez said the task force strives to be fair. At the same time, he and others added, the task force is charged with preventing terrorism, not waiting for the crime to occur and then determining who did it.
For instance, the task force might seek to deport a terrorism suspect for a lesser offense, such as a visa or weapons violation. Martinez stressed that less than 1 percent of people deported from the 16-county southeast Texas area since 2001 were from the Middle East.
In order to make identifications in difficult cases, task force members say they must sometimes work with informants who go deep undercover. The case against Carlos Ali Romero Varela was made by such an informant, records show.
Varela has pleaded guilty but not yet been sentenced for being part of a conspiracy to provide material support and resources to the AUC. The charge stems from Varela's negotiating for the sale of $25 million in cash and drugs for Russian-made weapons that could range from machine guns to shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles.
With the informant's help, investigators were able to track Varela from his fashionable home in The Woodlands to AUC commandants in the Colombian jungles. The trail led to clandestine meetings in Mexico City, London, St. Croix, Panama City and San Jose, Costa Rica. Eventually, a case was built against Varela and three others, all of whom have pleaded guilty.
Some probes expose breaches in security that need to be corrected, Martinez said, citing the discovery in 2003 of 30 Middle Easterners illegally hiding on a ship in Corpus Christi. The stowaways would not tell investigators why they were sneaking into the country, and they eventually were deported.
The U.S. Coast Guard ordered four armed security guards posted to see that none of the stowaways escaped. None did, but when Coast Guard officers returned they found only three guards on duty. One was asleep and only one was armed. Furthermore, the firm supplying the guards was not licensed to do business in Texas and was owned by a felon convicted of smuggling illegal immigrants, authorities said.
The lessons learned from the investigations should make the task force more effective, authorities said.
"We can't guarantee nothing will ever happen again," said Powers, the FBI agent in charge of the task force. "But we are in better shape. We have the national will, dedication and focus."
Yet task force members are braced for a long fight.
"It's only a matter of when terrorists will strike again," Porto said, "not if they will."
Hey, camp X-Ray has room for 30 more....
I think they might talk there.
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