Posted on 01/12/2002 4:04:25 PM PST by knighthawk
Authorities questioned four men Friday for possible involvement in an alleged plot to kill Gov. Jeb Bush and held two others on immigration charges, but by day's end they had all but wrapped up the case after their most promising lead collapsed.
The lead: a van investigators thought might contain traces of explosives after bomb-sniffing dogs reacted to it. Late Friday night, residue tests proved negative.
Investigators already were skeptical of information provided by a jailhouse informant that four South Florida men with Arab names had plotted to blow up the governor in Tallahassee Friday.
Additional information about the inmate cast fresh doubt on his story. The man, jailed in Broward County since July, has failed at least five lie-detector tests and has a criminal arrest record going back to 1999. He also may be motivated by revenge: He led agents Thursday night to a man they later took into custody for immigration charges. The man was the informant's former employer, who had fired him after an argument.
``We believe he's been a liar from the start,'' an investigator involved in the case said. ``All we care about is making sure the governor is safe, and we have no reason to believe anything to the contrary.''
Authorities began to investigate after Bush received a letter at the Capitol from the informant in late December detailing the possible attack. The inmate said four South Florida men with Middle Eastern backgrounds were planning to use a truck bomb Friday to kill the governor.
``We do not have the luxury of anything other than a complete and thorough investigation of these allegations,'' said Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Tim Moore.
There were reasons to believe the inmate's information. He supplied investigators with the names of several Middle Easterners who were known to the FBI for their involvement with explosives in South Florida in 1993.
And he told them about the owner of a van he said might be involved in the alleged plot. When authorities found the van and searched it Thursday, they found no explosives -- but bomb-sniffing dogs indicated the presence of something suspicious and the van was towed for further tests.
``It was negative for explosives,'' the investigator close to the case said. ``We don't know why the dogs pointed to it.''
As state and federal investigators looked into the possible plot to kill him, Bush cracked jokes at a Friday afternoon news conference and said he felt safe.
``Theoretically this is the day that bad things were supposed to happen. Here we are, 3 o'clock. Nothing has happened,'' Bush said. ``So life goes on.''
Earlier in the day, Moore was also downplaying the informant's story, saying the entire episode could turn out to be ``nothing more than some creative thinking.''
TOUGH TIME
For the men named by the informant, however, the past few days can't be dismissed so easily.
Amjad Hammad, who owns nine convenience stores in Broward and Palm Beach counties and is a U.S. citizen originally from Jordan, said he had been shadowed for two days by the FBI and FDLE, ``by air and by car.''
He said he has been ticketed three times in the past three days, and that his wife also had been ticketed.
Each time he was pulled over, Hammad said, police called in state and federal investigators. He and his car were searched each time.
Friday night, he tried to joke about it: ``I have a good escort service.''
Hammad said he is not involved in any Muslim organizations. ``I don't know if it was racial profiling because I'm an Arab American . . . I demand an apology from Jeb Bush.''
His cousin, Moaid Nasser, another Jordanian immigrant and U.S. citizen, also was interviewed by the FBI Friday morning at his home.
``The questions were related to terrorism, bombs and plots against the federal government, and my answer was no to all of them,'' he said. ``Even though it's insulting what happened and I'm ashamed of it, I respect the FBI for what they're doing and I hope they get it resolved.''
The governor said he was first informed of the threat last week and had been briefed by Moore frequently.
``These things don't happen regularly to governors, but occasionally they do,'' Bush said. ``There's nothing out of the ordinary in this regard.''
Bush said he wanted to reassure state employees who work in the Capitol complex.
``As it relates to the state Capitol here, there's no evidence to suggest that anything is going to happen here,'' Bush said. ``There's really no reason to be concerned for the workers . . . and for their families.''
Bush said his family was his first concern. He called his wife, Columba, and their three children Thursday when he learned that a story was about to be published. He said the family already knew of the threat, but he wanted to alert them to the story.
``I've been in this situation as a son, where I was watching television and my dad [former President George Bush] had a heart murmur, or when President Reagan was shot and my dad was flying back to Washington and I didn't get called because things happened really quickly,'' Bush said.
Bush said he also called his son, George P., who is attending Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños' inauguration, his daughter in Tallahassee and his son in Jacksonville.
``That's a natural fatherly instinct,'' he said. ``My family has been concerned, but I think they understand this is just part of the price you pay.''
UNRESOLVED ISSUE
Agents said Friday night they remain troubled by one unresolved question: Though their confidential informant had failed several polygraph tests, he passed on one point.
``The one thing he has not proved to be deceitful on was when he told us he passed C-4 explosives in 1993 to one of the individuals whose name he gave us,'' an investigator said.
Friday, federal investigators gave polygraph tests to the four men named by the informant. On the key question of whether they planned an attack on the governor, all said no and all passed.
However, ``one of those individuals proved deceitful when he was asked if he had ever handled explosives,'' the investigator said. But the investigator declined to say if it was the same person the informant had named as the one who received the C-4.
The inmate accused his former employer, a convenience store owner in Fort Lauderdale who is being detained by immigration authorities. He has an arrest record dating to 1996 for petty theft, dealing in stolen property and cocaine possession. Most of the charges were dropped but he pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor and served no time.
The informant was convicted of aggravated assault with a firearm and culpable negligence in one case, and intent to sell a counterfeit controlled substance and carrying a concealed weapon in another. He was sentenced in August 2000 for both cases and got three years' probation, according to records.
In April 2001, he was arrested again, this time on a charge of violating his probation after his girlfriend complained that he beat her up during an argument, according to his probation officer, Michael Stewart. He remains in jail on that charge.
Herald staff writers Lisa Arthur, Lesley Clark, Andrea Elliott, Steve Harrison, Joni James, Caroline Keough, Larry Lebowitz, Peter Wallsten, Luisa Yanez and researcher Elisabeth Donovan contributed to this report.
He tosses bombs and he doesn't like Republicans.
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