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09/17/01
Mobile Register (Alabama)
Staff Report
FBI agents gathered at a Daphne (East side of Mobile Bay)service station Friday morning but did not arrest or see anyone who appeared to be of Arabic descent, a bureau spokesman said Sunday afternoon.
Charles Middleton, special agent in charge of the FBI's Mobile office, made the statement in response to an article in Sunday's Register that quoted a clerk at the station as saying FBI agents and police had taken four men into custody.
Middleton said, "Our violent crime task force was out in Daphne Friday morning looking for a fugitive. The team arrived at the Shell station at about 5 a.m. as a staging area.
"Someone came out of the Shell station and told us their were four Arabic males in the station an hour before. We didn't fully explain to the person why we were there."
According to Middleton, the agents left their cars at the station on U.S. 98. He said they were looking for two men, one in Daphne and one in Bay Minette, but did not find either. He said the team continued its search for the men Sunday.
Middleton said the story about the four men being taken into custody was "amazing," especially since the man at the service station "came out and told us they were there an hour before we were."
The Sunday article quoted John Mornan, a cashier at the Shell station in Daphne, as saying that four men who appeared to be of Arabic descent came to the station about 5:20 a.m. Friday. One man remained outside to pump gasoline into the white van the men were traveling in and the others came inside.
He said one of the men, who bought caffeinated soft drinks and ice, told him they had been driving for days from California and were tired. He said the men did not appear tired and the van had a Florida license plate.
Mornan said the men appeared to be nervous and would not make eye contact.
After a few minutes, the man who had been pumping gasoline came to the door and spoke to the others in a language that was not English, Mornan said.
The men quickly went outside where FBI agents and police surrounded them. They were searched, handcuffed and put into two cars and driven away, said Mornan.
He said two FBI agents got into the van the men had been using and drove it away.
Mornan said several FBI agents remained behind and one told him that they had been following the men from Tampa since Thursday night.
He said the agent told him the men were expected to rendezvous with three other men but had not done so and the agents were concerned that, with dawn approaching, the men would realize they were being followed.
Mornan said he did not ask whether the men were under arrest or were just being detained for questioning.
He said he did not ask for the names of the FBI agents.
"They were wearing vests with 'FBI' written across them," Mornan said.
Contacted Sunday by the Register and told of Middleton's statement, Mornan, a 65-year-old retired aerospace engineer, said that the FBI must have been working on something that it did not want to reveal and that he did not want to argue with the FBI or do anything to harm national security.
"Why would I want to make up something like that," he said. "If I'd been looking for press (coverage), it would have been different. I didn't call you, you called me."
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