Freed from a judge's gag order, FBI officials and Las Vegas police confirmed they learned in the autumn of 2002 about two videotapes suggesting terrorists had cased the city's casinos -- but decided it wasn't necessary to alert the public.
The officials on Tuesday also strongly disputed that they didn't take the evidence seriously, as suggested in Justice Department documents and by a federal prosecutor in Detroit who alerted them to the evidence and spoke publicly of his concerns this week.
The tapes were shown to casinos in the autumn of 2002, officials said, but they added there were differing recollections about whether some local officials declined a later opportunity to learn more about the surveillance from an FBI agent from Detroit who had worked on the case.
"We took the tapes seriously," Special Agent David Nanz in Las Vegas said. "When we get a tape like that ... further investigation is required to determine its relevance. And that's what we did."
Nanz said, however, that his office agreed with colleagues in Detroit that both tapes amounted to terrorist surveillance. "We don't dispute those were surveillance tapes," he said.
In documents and interviews reported on by AP on Monday, authorities in Detroit alleged as early as September 2002 that Las Vegas authorities didn't want to issue a public warning because of concerns it might hurt tourism or affect the casinos' legal liability.
Las Vegas authorities denied on Tuesday that those factors affected their decision.
Nanz said one of the two tapes, the Spanish al-Qaeda footage, was still classified at the time and Las Vegas authorities weren't immediately told that a witness named Youseff Hmimssa would corroborate the threat on the Detroit tape by saying members of a terror cell in Detroit had vowed to destroy the tourist city.
"The FBI in Las Vegas was not made aware in advance that Hmimssa's testimony would implicate security issues with Las Vegas,'' he said.
After several Las Vegas authorities said on Monday that they never knew about the tapes, Clark County Undersheriff Douglas Gillespie confirmed two of his officers had indeed seen the footage and that authorities also offered the casinos to see the footage.
"At no time did the information gleaned from these videos change the threat level in Las Vegas," Gillespie said, adding that he believed his department handled the information correctly.
Nanz and Gillespie spoke on Tuesday night after the Justice Department sought permission from a judge in Detroit to talk about some evidence that emerged in the AP story even though there is a gag order in the Detroit case.
Both men sought to resolve disputes among Las Vegas authorities, such as Mayor Oscar Goodman, who claimed they never knew about the tape. Their explanations, however, still conflicted with some documents written at the time.
One of the tapes, found in Spain in 2002, shows al-Qaeda's European operatives surveying Las Vegas casinos in 1997, engaging in casual conversation that included an apparent reference to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
The other tape found in a Detroit terror cell's apartment had eerily similar footage of the MGM Grand, the Excalibur and New York, New York casinos -- three hotels within a short distance of each other on the Las Vegas strip with a combined total of 11,000 rooms.
One Justice Department document obtained by the AP quotes a federal prosecutor in Las Vegas as saying the city's mayor was concerned about the "deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry" if the evidence became public.
Another memo states the casinos didn't want to see the footage for fear it would make them more likely to be held liable in civil court if an attack occurred.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including