By JOHN SOLOMON
The Associated
Press
10/4/01 12:56 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The month before the Sept. 11 hijacking
attacks, the CIA received information suggesting Osama bin Laden was
increasingly determined to strike on U.S. soil. In the days since, the FBI has
linked the hijackers to bin Laden's network through phone intercepts, money
transfers and training camps.
U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, described to
The Associated Press a trail of evidence they believe points to bin Laden's
involvement in the attacks by 19 terrorists who crashed four airliners.
In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair divulged Thursday that
intelligence has learned since the attacks that bin Laden asserted shortly
before the hijackings that he was "preparing a major attack on America" and
asked his close associates to return to Afghanistan.
Among the key pieces of evidence, the officials said, is a
series of money transfers between hijacking ring leader Mohamed Atta and a
Middle Eastern man named Mustafa Ahmed. The last occurred a few days before the
hijackings when Atta wired money back to Ahmed in the United Arab Emirates, the
officials said.
The FBI believes the transfers may provide a clear link to bin
Laden. Agents are investigating whether Ahmed was an alias for a man named Shayk
Saiid who U.S. authorities long have believed helped run bin Laden's finances,
the officials said.
Without mentioning a name, Blair said one of bin Laden's closest
associates was responsible for planning the attack.
President Bush said Thursday that with the help of other
countries, 150 people have been arrested as suspected terrorists linked to bin
Laden's al-Qaida network.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said authorities are pursuing some
260,000 leads and tips, including 24,000 that came in last week. He said FBI lab
and forensic experts are examining some 3,000 pieces of evidence collected from
the four crash sites and other places. He also said that since Sept. 11 the FBI
has initiated 120 hate-crime investigations of attacks on people of Middle
Eastern origin in the United States.
In documents sent to banks seeking to freeze terrorist assets,
the government has used Saiid's and Ahmed's names interchangeably, records show.
Ahmed is believed to have left the United Arab Emirates Sept. 11
for Pakistan and is a major focus of the FBI's global manhunt.
A U.S. Treasury official said Thursday that the government is
planning to freeze the assets of many more people and organizations suspected of
terrorist activities or support. Bush already has frozen assets of 27 such
groups and people.
Other evidence includes "general but vague" information the CIA
developed in August that heightened concerns that bin Laden was urging his
followers to strike in the United States after several attacks overseas in the
1990s.
The information indicated bin Laden and his supporters "were
trying to bring the fight to America" but details were lacking, a U.S. official
told The Associated Press.
"There was something specific in early August that said to us
that he was determined in striking on U.S. soil," the official said, speaking
only on condition of anonymity. "But there was nothing about who, when, where or
how."
The information prompted the CIA to issue a renewed warning that
U.S. interests overseas and at home should be vigilant, the officials said.
But U.S. intelligence officials, along with congressional
officials who have been briefed on the evidence and cooperating foreign
intelligence agencies all told the AP that the CIA did not possess any
information that identified a specific plot of the magnitude that struck the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
"We've got plenty of areas we can improve, but I don't want
anybody to get the idea that that was a great intelligence failure," the House
Intelligence Committee chairman, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., said this week. "If
it's anything, it's probably, 'Who would have expected an atrocity of that
magnitude?"'
The CIA's August warning is being viewed as a piece in the
puzzle of evidence. Another piece, officials said, involves a meeting two other
hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, had with a bin Laden associate in
January 2000 in Malaysia.
The meeting was observed and recorded at the time, but its
significance was not apparent until just a few weeks before the attacks,
officials said. By that time, the two men already were somewhere in the United
States.
The Malaysia meeting took on new significance when U.S.
investigators developed evidence in Yemen this year that the man the two
hijackers met with in 2000 was involved in the planning of the USS Cole bombing,
the officials said.
Blair said Thursday at least three of the hijackers had been
directly linked to bin Laden's al-Qaida network, and that one had played key
roles in earlier attacks on the USS Cole and the U.S. embassies in Africa.
Also Thursday, the FBI disclosed that surveillance video
captured two hijackers, Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, going to an ATM, a gas
station and a Wal-Mart in the Portland, Maine, area hours before they boarded a
commuter flight that linked up with one of the jetliners that crashed into the
World Trade Center.
Information gathered by U.S. and foreign intelligence services
and law enforcement, officials said, also indicates four of the hijackers
trained at Afghan camps tied to bin Laden's network.
Officials said the four included Wail Alshehri. Uncorroborated
intelligence indicates he received several months of training last year in
hand-to-hand combat, bomb-making and poison-mixing at Al Farooq camp in
Khandhar, Afghanistan, officials said.
The others linked to Afghan camps are Waleed Alshehri, believed
to be a brother of Wail Alshehri, Hamza Alghamdi and Nawaq Alhamzi, the
officials said.
