The largest criminal investigation in American history has exposed the rough outlines of at least a half-dozen centers of terrorist support on US soil operating underground before the Sept. 11 suicide attacks, officials say.
Law enforcement officials say they believe suspected supporters of terrorism have stolen credit cards and used wire transfers to finance their activities, created false visas and identity documents, and moved frequently with like-minded Middle Easterners.
Arresting many, catching few
Investigators believe they have arrested a small handful of terrorist supporters among the more than 1,000 people, most of Middle Eastern descent, they have detained since Sept. 11 and they are searching for more.
"There are people in the United States who have association with, affiliation with, support of certain terrorist groups," FBI director Robert Mueller said Friday. "We're doing everything we can to identify exactly the extent of that activity."
The pockets of terrorist support exist in Boston, New Jersey, suburban Washington, Texas, southern California, and the Upper Midwest, particularly Detroit, the officials said, speaking only on condition of anonymity.
"We don't call each of them cells. We call them terrorist presences. They're almost like cliques. Clear in their hatred for America, and loosely working together," one law enforcement official said.
Officials said the suspected terrorists appear to be aligned with several groups, including Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and the Palestinian Hamas movement. They cautioned they are a small number among a large Muslim population.
The evidence is not clean and organized enough to suggest each suspect belongs to a specific cell, another law enforcement official said. But it draws the most comprehensive picture to date of terrorist threats on US soil.
The emerging snapshot is the product of a massive joint investigation by the FBI, immigration officials, Customs Service and other federal agencies. They have developed evidence through phone intercepts, surveillance, search warrants, meticulous reconstructions of money transfers and interrogations.
Hundreds have been detained or arrested, and others are being monitored in hopes they will provide leads to additional collaborators, officials said. But most of those in custody are not believed to be terrorists and are being held on technical violations in hopes they know something or someone of interest to the FBI, officials said.
The suspected activities span the gamut from fund-raising in Texas and recruiting among Arab college students in California to planning in Boston and Detroit of attacks overseas, the officials said.
Several locations also had money wire outlets belonging to the Barakaat network that US officials raided this month and accused of laundering money for al-Qaeda. The company denies those allegations.
The evidence shows suspected sympathizers are remarkably migratory, just like the 19 hijackers who crisscrossed the country from San Diego to Maine before their attacks.
A recent federal court filing details the extensive travels of two Middle Eastern men being held for possessing a cache of fake IDs that could have been used to assist terrorists.
On the road
The men entered the US in New York in fall last year, spent time in the same Washington suburbs where five of the hijackers got false Virginia identifications, moved to Ohio, where officials recently raided a money exchange suspected of assisting the al-Qaeda network, and then proceeded to Detroit, where they were arrested.
"Their clothing was kept in duffel bags, suitcases and garbage bags, there was essentially no furniture to speak of, nor any beds in the apartment," prosecutors said in a court filing asking they be held without bail.
Even before Sept. 11, the source of terrorist money began emerging during a trial last summer of an Algerian convicted of plotting to blow up the Los Angeles airport in December 1999.
The Algerian's collaborators testified they supported themselves through stolen credit cards, some taken from patrons of a Boston health club. They also plotted to buy a gas station so they could steal credit card numbers as people paid for gas.
Since the terror attacks, authorities have arrested at least one person, Chicago cab driver Youssef Hmimssa, accused of using a hidden device to steal credit card numbers from customers. He also has been indicted for fraud and false documents but has not been charged with a terrorist related crime.
Tracking down US-based al-Qaeda operatives:
* Upper Midwest: Customs Service intelligence gathered last summer led authorities to Nabil al-Marabh, a former Boston cab driver identified as an al-Qaeda operative and one of the key people in detention. Officials said customs had evidence of financial transactions between al-Marabh and Raed Hijazi, a suspect in the failed plot to kill Americans and Israelis at a hotel in Jordan during the millennium celebrations.
- The manhunt for al-Marabh, which ended with his arrest in Chicago, led authorities to an apartment in Detroit where they stumbled upon three men with airport ID badges, a wide array of false identification documents and a day planner with Arabic notations that suggested attacks being planned overseas. Officials say the day planner had plans for attacks on the Alia airport in Jordan and a plot to kill ex-Defense Secretary William Cohen during a visit to Turkey.
* Boston: Investigators suspect a cell of al-Qaeda support in the Boston area. Before moving to Detroit, al-Marabh worked as a cab driver in Boston along with Hijazi. Jordanian officials say Hijazi has confessed that he planned terrorist attacks and received bomb-making training in Afghan guerrilla camps run by bin Laden. Officials say they have evidence the plotting for some of the foiled millennium attacks took place in Boston.
* New Jersey: Authorities have detained more than two dozen men in an area where at least six hijackers lived.
- Since Sept. 11, law enforcement officials are suspicious about Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, both from India, who were arrested aboard a train in Fort Worth, Texas, after flying out of the Newark, New Jersey, airport the morning of the hijackings. Authorities said the two were carrying box cutters, had US$5,600 in cash and hair dye, and had shaved their bodies of hair as was recommended by hijacking ringleader Mohamed Atta.
* Washington DC region: Agents arrested a security guard in Virginia named Mohammed Abdi on forgery charges after finding his name and phone number in a car left behind by one of the hijackers at Dulles International Airport.
* Texas: US officials have frozen two bank accounts belonging to a Richardson, Texas, Internet company with several Muslim groups as clients. The company was raided by federal agents a week before Sept. 11. Its bank accounts were frozen because it received a US$250,000 investment from the wife of a top political leader of Hamas.
* Southern California: A Jordanian college student, Osama Awadallah, 21, is charged with lying about his association with two hijackers. His name and number were found in the car of one of the hijackers.
- Authorities also have traced investments from a Saudi businessman accused of aiding bin Laden to a diamond company in San Diego.
Source: NY Times
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