In Years of Plots and Clues, Scope of Qaeda Eluded U.S.

The New York Times ^ | June 9, 2002 | JUDITH MILLER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

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June 9, 2002
In Years of Plots and Clues, Scope of Qaeda Eluded U.S. By JUDITH MILLER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

WASHINGTON, June 7— A re-examination of years of terrorist plots and attacks around the world, including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, suggests that American intelligence agencies profoundly underestimated Al Qaeda's reach and aspirations for more than a decade as it grew from obscurity into a global terrorist threat, lawmakers and investigators said this week.

As Congressional investigators look back far beyond the series of signals missed before the Sept. 11 attacks, they are seeking answers to many questions about Al Qaeda that law enforcement and intelligence agencies still cannot answer themselves, officials said.

In particular, they said, Congressional investigators are trying to determine whether the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. overlooked a possible Qaeda connection to the World Trade Center bombing in February 1993. The United States has not officially blamed Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden for that operation.

Law enforcement officials acknowledged this week that they did not know how and when Al Qaeda was created, or whether it was connected to a tangled array of terrorism plots and plotters, including Abdul Hakim Murad, a Pakistani who told the police in the Philippines in 1995 of a plan to assassinate Pope John Paul II, blow up 12 American jetliners over Asia and fly a plane into C.I.A. headquarters.

But with the benefit of much hindsight, investigators are seeing potential clues that went virtually unnoticed almost a decade ago. In particular, they are looking closely at the man convicted of masterminding the 1993 attack, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who in interviews with F.B.I. agents in the mid-90's seemed obsessed with the notion of hijacking airliners and attacking vulnerable targets, and who had clearly studied the inner workings of airport security.

Investigators have also determined that some of the bomb-making and survival manuals recovered after the 1993 bombing match those found in the investigation of later attacks that were connected to Al Qaeda.

Even in its earliest stages, the House-Senate inquiry has concluded that American intelligence agencies did not analyze and share the information and evidence that was collected about terrorists after the Central Intelligence Agency created its counterterrorism center in Langley, Va., in 1986. Lawmakers on the committee said they were astonished at the depth of the problems that have plagued the American intelligence community.

"If you tie the general warnings together, and you put all of the bombings and attacks of the 90's together, then combine it with last summer's failures, it should have, in my judgment, had the bells ringing, all the way up," said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in an interview on Thursday night. "But it didn't."

Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the committee, criticized the "lack of aggressive follow-through for years" that he said left the nation vulnerable to the kind of attacks that brought down the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon. "We are trying to answer a cascade of questions about what the decision-making process was since 1986, what criteria were used to make judgments about what to do," Mr. Graham said.

United States intelligence and law enforcement officials now also say that more recent opportunities were not seized on quickly or forcefully enough. Among other events, they cite a Qaeda meeting in 2000 in Malaysia where two of the Sept. 11 hijackers and other members of the bin Laden network assembled.

Federal investigators say a crucial part of their task now is assembling a more thorough history of Al Qaeda and a more complete picture of earlier attacks, including much previously undisclosed information about possible links between events that happened many years ago and Sept. 11.

Several Arabic names and institutions emerged repeatedly in the government's counterterrorism inquiries throughout the last decade, officials say. But investigators often failed to understand whether, and precisely how, these seemingly far-flung Islamic militants, and the banks, charities and other institutions associated with them, were connected.

Michael A. Sheehan, the coordinator of the State Department's counterterrorism office during the Clinton administration, said that until the mid-1990's, Washington did not fully grasp that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, which killed six people, was far from an isolated event. Rather, it was the first strike in what would become a series of such attacks by Islamic militants with increasingly global reach and breathtaking ambition.

"We really didn't see it until 1995 or '96," Mr. Sheehan said. "Until then, the intelligence and law enforcement communities kept insisting this was a lone cell operation," he added. "They really missed it initially."

This week, law enforcement officials identified Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a 37-year-old Qaeda leader, as having played an important operational role in the Sept. 11 attacks. His importance in the plot was confirmed by Abu Zubaydah, a captured Qaeda leader who is being debriefed by American authorities in southern Pakistan, although some officials have questioned how much Mr. Zubaydah knew of Mr. Mohammed's activities.

Mr. Mohammed may be a relative of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who coordinated the first bombing of the World Trade Center and a failed plot to simultaneously bomb a dozen American passenger jets over the Pacific in 1995. For investigators, his link to Mr. Yousef raises questions about whether there was a connection between the first attack on the trade center and the attacks that brought down its towers.

Other links between those two events have not yet been fully explored, law enforcement officials say.

Mr. bin Laden declared a holy war against American citizens in 1998, the year that two American embassies were bombed in East Africa, an operation that American officials say was the work of Al Qaeda. Mr. bin Laden was indicted that November for his role in those bombings. Lawmakers and investigators said the inquiry would look closely not only at lapses by investigators but also at the responses to the attacks by the government's highest officials, including the president.

A senior lawmaker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the scope of the inquiry had already widened to include government responses to other suspected Qaeda attacks against American interests abroad, like the 1998 embassy bombings and the attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen in October 2000.

"I think as we look back at the failure of various people in high places — I'm speaking about the Clinton administration — to react against the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 — what did we do?" the lawmaker, a Republican, said. "An investigation. What happens when you don't do anything to destroy these people? They become emboldened, and that was exactly what happened."

Besides searching for system failures and assessing blame, the inquiry will compile recommendations for the new Department of Homeland Security, a cabinet-level agency proposed on Thursday night by President Bush that would combine 22 federal agencies to prevent attacks against the United States.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has turned over hundreds of thousands of documents to the joint committees, but while the bureau is helping in the Congressional investigation, it is not engaged in its own historical reassessment of terrorist attacks as it swings into its new mission to prevent future attacks, mainly by expanding its analytical capacity.

Bureau officials say they are hopeful that their compilation of past memorandums — and perhaps overlooked clues — will help them improve the F.B.I.'s investigative and analytical ability.

"On any given event, there might be 20,000 dots to connect," one senior official said. "But only 10 are pertinent. We have to find those 10."

Rita Katz, a Washington-based terrorism analyst, noted, as did Congressional investigators, that many of the same names and groups have emerged in virtually every failed or successful plot by Islamic militants against Americans at home or abroad — Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind sheik; Ali Mohammed, the former Army sergeant who trained militants who trained future terrorists in Afghan camps for Mr. bin Laden; Wadih El-Hage, Mr. bin Laden's former personal secretary; and this week, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, linked to Ramzi Yousef.

Early Tentacles
Al Qaeda's Roots on U.S. Soil

Mr. bin Laden's name emerged in the F.B.I.'s investigation of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and was eventually included on a list of unindicted people who might be co-conspirators. But Al Qaeda was never mentioned in the trials of the people behind the bombing or a related plot to blow up New York bridges, tunnels and monuments.

Terrorism experts now say that some of the militants who were later linked to those plots, and to subsequent terrorist attacks aimed at Americans, initially appeared in the United States long before the 1993 bombing.

Government officials and analysts say the tentacles of what later became Al Qaeda first appeared in the United States as early as 1986 — the same year the C.I.A. established its counterterrorism center to enhance the sharing of information among the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and the other agencies that collect and analyze intelligence information. This is the reason the Congressional committees have decided to extend their investigation back to 1986.

The organization that eventually evolved into Al Qaeda (the name means "the base" in Arabic) began as the Makhtab al Khadimat, the Office of Services, in Peshawar, Pakistan, according to federal prosecutors, trial testimony and terrorism analysts.

Ms. Katz says that the Makhtab's journal, Al Jihad (Holy War), was initially distributed in the United States in 1986 by the Islamic Center of Tucson. The center was also listed at the time as the Makhtab's only American branch.

Two people later associated with the Tucson center — Wael Hamza Jalaidan, its director, and Wadih El-Hage — were eventually linked to Al Qaeda by the authorities. Last year, the government listed Mr. Jalaidan, who heads the Saudi-based World Muslim League, as a founder of Al Qaeda and its logistics chief. Mr. El-Hage was convicted in the 1998 conspiracy to bomb American embassies in Africa.

Investigators learned during the first World Trade Center case that one of the plotters had tried to buy weapons from Mr. El-Hage, who was then living in Dallas but spending much of his time in Afghanistan.

But law enforcement officials never translated the bomb manuals that were found in 1990 in the apartment of one of Mr. El-Hage's associates, El Sayyid A. Nosair, or analyzed the photographs of such potential targets as the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building, until after the 1993 trade center bombing.

With the emergence of Mr. Mohammed as a subject of the Sept. 11 investigation, investigators are looking closely again at the 1993 bombing.

After Mr. Yousef's arrest in Pakistan in 1995, investigators learned that he had spent much of the time between 1992 and 1995 in a guest house in Peshawar that Mr. bin Laden had financed.

Mr. Yousef's first interview by the F.B.I. also revealed that he was obsessed with hijackings and spectacular attacks, with the need to attack vulnerable targets, and with other key features of what would later become classic Qaeda operations.

In the interview, conducted in Islamabad in early 1995, Mr. Yousef explained that he had decided in 1992 to fly first class to the United States from Pakistan because first class passengers are subject to less scrutiny than other passengers. Some of the Sept. 11 hijackers also reserved first class seats.

He said he had chosen the World Trade Center as a target because he wanted to topple one tower into the other and cause a total of 250,000 deaths, the interview shows. It also shows that Mr. Yousef was a careful student of airport security. He talked about spending time watching television documentaries on airport screening and studying weapons, chemicals and containers that would not be detected by even the most sophisticated screening devices.

Further Links
Bombing Manuals and Other Clues

Terrorism experts and United States officials say another link among the first World Trade Center bombing and subsequent Qaeda attacks is the manuals on bombings and other information on how to survive in enemy territory that were found on plotters of the 1993 bombing and later Al Qaeda strikes. They say the manuals found in the luggage of the trade center bombing conspirator who accompanied Mr. Yousef to New York in 1992, and in the London apartment of Khalid al-Fawaz, who was indicted in the 1998 embassy bombings, were virtually identical.

The main difference was that the manual found in Mr. Fawaz's apartment had some extra sections that were clearly added as Al Qaeda gained experience and training improved, said Ms. Katz, who has studied both in their original Arabic.

Although the F.B.I. has still not concluded that Mr. Yousef's subsequent plot to blow up 12 jetliners, devised in Manila in 1995, was sponsored by Al Qaeda, several militants who were linked to this plot intermingled with those involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and later conspiracies devised by Al Qaeda.

Mr. Yousef's presumed relative, Mr. Mohammed, is being sought by the government for his role in the Manila airline plot. Investigators say he played an important role in subsequent Qaeda plots, perhaps even the Sept. 11 attacks. Federal investigators say Mr. Mohammed may have been living in Germany at the same time Mohamed Atta and some of the other hijackers were living there.

In early 1995, the police in Manila investigated an explosion in an apartment that was occupied by two people linked to Ramzi Yousef, who was then a fugitive. Investigators discovered a laptop computer that contained details of a plot to blow up 12 American commercial jets as they flew from Asia to the United States.

One of the men who was arrested, Abdul Hakim Murad, has recently attracted the interest of Congressional investigators. Mr. Murad told the police in the Philippines that one of the ideas he had discussed with Mr. Yousef was hijacking a jet and crashing it into C.I.A. headquarters.

According to a Jan. 20, 1995, briefing report written by the Manila police, Mr. Murad said he came up with the idea during a conversation with Mr. Yousef. Mr. Murad told the authorities, the report said, that "he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger."

"Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the C.I.A. headquarters," the report said. "There will be no bomb or any explosive that he will use in its execution. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute."

A Growing Reach
A Shadowy Figure Comes Into Focus

None of the country's intelligence agencies accurately perceived the threat posed by Al Qaeda until the mid-1990's, officials say. Osama bin Laden remained a shadowy figure who built a multinational terror network whose scope was largely undetected until 1998, when Al Qaeda bombed the embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The attacks, on Aug. 7, 1998, occurred within minutes of each other and killed 224 people, including 11 Americans. Several thousand people were wounded. American authorities say that top officials of the organization, including Mr. bin Laden, had selected the targets because they were believed to be vulnerable to attack by bomb-laden trucks.

Several Qaeda associates were convicted, but the authorities say others are still at large.

After the attacks on the embassies, the F.B.I. created an Osama bin Laden unit. A former senior F.B.I. official said that the bureau's knowledge of Al Qaeda was almost nonexistent until after the East Africa case. "I hate to say it," the former official said, "but the bureau was slow to come up to speed on bin Laden."

In December 1999, after the government issued a warning of possible terrorist strikes around the worldwide millennium celebration, an alert customs agent in Washington State noticed that a man named Ahmed Ressam was sweating profusely as he tried to enter the United States from Canada. The agent searched his trunk and found a large cache of explosives. Mr. Ressam later confessed to plotting to blow up Los Angeles International Airport on New Year's Eve.

Mr. Ressam was linked to the Qaeda network. But more recently, law enforcement officials said they had come to regard him as a freelancer because he had not cleared the airport plot with Al Qaeda's senior commanders. An official said that Mr. Ressam had intended to give Al Qaeda credit for the operation.

Even as law enforcement officials continue to debate whether Al Qaeda operatives were behind a number of the terrorist attacks of the 1990's, they say they agree that Osama bin Laden's followers were responsible for the October 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer Cole, shortly after the ship entered the Yemeni harbor at Aden.

By that time, investigators had grasped an important characteristic of Al Qaeda's operations. Important operatives had moved from one plot to the next, sometimes getting promotions to higher levels of responsibility. Investigators also believed that identifying and arresting those people responsible for the Cole would help prevent the next Al Qaeda operation.

As a result, these officials believe that given the warning signals available to the F.B.I. in the summer of 2001, investigators correctly concentrated on the Cole investigation, rather than turning their attention to the possibility of a domestic attack. Much of their effort centered on attempts to move investigative teams back into the country after they were removed in a dispute with the American ambassador over security measures for F.B.I. agents.

If the F.B.I. had remained at full strength, officials say, investigators might have more quickly identified Mr. Mohammed, the 37-year-old Kuwaiti who attended the meeting in Malaysia in January 2000 that was also attended by Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaq Alhazmi.

Several months after that meeting, both Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi attended flight school in San Diego. Their names were not added to a terrorist watch list by the C.I.A. until Aug. 23, 2001. The 19-month gap between the Malaysia meeting and the placement of their names on the list is a central area of inquiry for the Congressional panel.

By the time their names were added to the list, it was too late. The plot by four Qaeda cells to attack the World Trade Center and targets in Washington had reached its final stages. Mr. Midhar and Mr. Alhazmi were on board American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

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