[iwar] [fc:Hijackers.Spent.$500,000;.at.Least.4.Trained.in.Afghan.Camps]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-09-29 11:31:09
Next message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:What.kind.of.Muslim.writes.like.this?]"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Protesters.March.on.Washington.to.Oppose.War.and.Racism.After.the.Terrorist.Attacks]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Message-Id: <200109291831.LAA06754@big.all.net>
To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List)
Organization: I'm not allowed to say
From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
Date: Sat, 29 Sep 2001 11:31:09 -0700 (PDT)
Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Hijackers.Spent.$500,000;.at.Least.4.Trained.in.Afghan.Camps]
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

U.S. Develops Picture of Overseas Plot
Hijackers Spent $500,000; at Least 4 Trained in Afghan Camps

By Dan Eggen and Bob Woodward, Washington Post, September 29, 2001, Page A01

The terrorists who carried out the Sept.  11 attacks were bankrolled
with $500,000 from overseas that financed an operation planned and
launched several years ago in Germany, with crucial support in Britain,
the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan, senior government officials
have concluded. 

U.S.  investigators have determined that at least four of the 19
suspected hijackers were trained at camps in Afghanistan run by Osama
bin Laden, whose al Qaeda network is believed responsible for the
assaults on New York and Washington.  They also have tentatively
concluded there are links between bin Laden and most of the other
hijackers, according to information gathered by the Justice Department,
FBI and CIA. 

Government investigators are becoming increasingly convinced that one or
two other hijackings were in the works, officials said, and are focusing
on three men in U.S.  custody who received flight training.  One was
detained while seeking flight simulator training in Minnesota before the
hijackings, and two others were arrested on a train in Texas after
departing on a jet that was grounded after the attacks, sources said. 

Government officials said other people in the United States might have
provided minor assistance or had knowledge that a terrorist operation
was underway.  But the FBI has found little evidence so far that the
teams of hijackers received much support here, sources said. 

"There seems to be no U.S.  mastermind," one official said. 

The Justice Department has cast a global dragnet over the last two weeks
in a hunt for accomplices.  It is narrowing its criminal investigation
to a number of individuals and is beginning to formulate criminal
charges that could be filed against them, sources said.  But a senior
Justice official declined to predict when the first indictment might be
handed down. 

"We are past the first phase, and we are beginning to sharpen and focus
the investigation," one Justice official said.  "You don't get smoking
guns in a case like this.  The key is going to be in the details, in
putting together the pieces, and we've gone a long way to doing that.  . 
.  .  We're looking with particularity at a number of people."

The disclosures provide the most complete picture yet of the direction
and scope of the U.S.  investigation into the deadliest terror attack in
American history, which has left 6,500 people missing or dead in New
York, Washington and Pennsylvania.  The hijackings have led to arrests
on every continent but Antarctica. 

In tracing $500,000 flowing into U.S.  bank accounts used by Mohamed
Atta and other suspected members of the hijacking teams, the FBI has
documented numerous large cash withdrawals and a long trail of hotels,
rental cars and airplane trips that largely dispel any notion of an
austere plot, a senior government official said.  Previous reports have
said the attacks cost no more than $200,000. 

Some of the money used to prepare the attack has already been linked to
accounts in the Middle East, the source said, and investigators have
documented instances of simultaneous withdrawals from the same account
in different cities. 

"This was not a low-budget operation," the official said.  "There is
quite a bit of money coming in, and they are spending quite a bit of
money."

Investigators are convinced that the details of the terror plot were
hatched in Hamburg, Germany, where Atta and two other suspected
hijackers, Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Samir Jarrah, are believed to have
run a terrorist cell out of a second-floor student apartment. 

The FBI is doubling its contingent of agents working on the
investigation in Germany, in the belief that the trail will lead from
there to the Middle East, one official said.  The initial concept for
the Sept.  11 attacks likely came from Afghanistan, where bin Laden is
believed to be hiding, another official said. 

Investigators have found that the suspected leaders in the plot moved in
and out of the United States beginning at least 18 months ago, with
lower-level hijackers not arriving until this year.  Atta returned to
Germany at least twice after arriving in the United States, a source
said. 

"There were two groups on each plane," one senior official said. 
"You've got the brains, who are the pilots and the leaders, and then you
have the muscle coming in later on.  They were the ones who held the
passengers at bay."

The FBI is deeply suspicious of the circumstances surrounding three key
men who have been detained in the case.  Zacarias Moussaoui was taken
into custody in Minnesota in August after he attempted to pay cash to
learn how to steer, but not take off or land, a jumbo jet. 

Moussaoui is not cooperating with authorities. 

Two others, Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, were detained on
an Amtrak train Sept.  12 in Fort Worth with hair dye, large amounts of
cash and box-cutter knives like the ones used in the hijackings.  The
men, who had lived in Jersey City, had flown on a plane from Newark to
St.  Louis that was grounded after the attacks.  Both men had flight
training, one source said. 

FBI agents have combed the passenger manifest on that flight and have
not found anyone else who is believed to be a potential hijacker, an
official said. 

Adding another important element to the global investigation, British
authorities yesterday accused an Algerian pilot of training four of the
hijackers, including the apparent pilot of the jet that crashed into the
Pentagon. 

During an extradition hearing in London, British prosecutor Arvinda
Sambir suggested that Lotfi Raissi, 27, may have been a knowing
participant in the terrorist plot, and that U.S.  authorities might
charge him with conspiracy to murder. 

"The hope is that he will be able to tell us who planned what and when,"
added one senior U.S.  official. 

However, the British prosecutor left open the possibility that Raissi
may have instructed the hijackers at an Arizona flight school without
knowing their intentions.  Defense lawyer Richard Egan said Raissi
"adamantly denies any involvement in the recent appalling tragedies."

In a sign of U.S.  investigators' intense interest in the case, eight
FBI agents attended the hearing at Bow Street Magistrates' Court.  The
court ordered Raissi held in jail for another week, pending a second
hearing on the U.S.  extradition request. 

The original request, issued June 19, said Raissi had given false
information on an application for a U.S.  pilot's license.  Now,
authorities want to pursue his alleged connections with the hijackers. 

Dressed in a white track-suit top and pants, Raissi spoke only to
confirm his name during the brief hearing. 

Sambir said that Raissi, who was arrested in Britain last week, had
visited the United States several times this year.  The evidence against
him, she said, includes a videotape of him flying on June 23 from Las
Vegas to Phoenix with Hani Hanjour, who is believed to have been the
pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that hit the Pentagon. 

In June, Hanjour was a member of the flight simulator club of the Sawyer
School of Aviation in Phoenix, according to the school's spokeswoman. 
Raissi was also a member of the Phoenix flight simulator club for five
months this year and used a flight simulator at a Phoenix area airport
at the same time as Hanjour, according to the aviation school. 

"He was a lead instructor of four of the pilots that were responsible
for the hijackings," Sambir said in court.  "We say he was there to
ensure that the pilots were capable and trained for this purpose," she
added. 

Raissi received a U.S.  commercial pilot's license in January 1999, with
a rating to fly a Boeing 737.  Two days later, he was certified as a
ground instructor, and in March 1999, he received a license to be a
flight instructor. 

Raissi lived in a Phoenix apartment complex and listed himself as both a
student and employee at Westwind Aviation Academy, a flight school at
the Phoenix Deer Valley Airport, according to the East Valley Tribune, a
Mesa, Ariz., newspaper.  Raissi has said he trained at Westwind in 1997
and 1998, according to documents the FBI showed to another local flight
school director. 

Westwind was acquired two years ago by Pan Am International Flight
Academy, a Florida company.  Todd Huvard, a vice president at Pan Am
International, said the company was cooperating with the FBI but would
not release any information to the press. 

Last week, police searched Raissi's apartment in the village of
Colnbrook, Berkshire, near London's Heathrow airport, and took a flight
manual and a pilot's logbook that had several pages torn out,
authorities said. 

In an odd twist, a database search of public records shows that Raissi
had used the Social Security number of a Jersey City woman who died in
1991.  The woman, Dorothy Hansen, was a retired factory worker. 

Hansen's grandson, Carl G.  Hansen III, 37, said he had never heard of
Raissi.  Joyce Mastrangelo, Dorothy Hansen's daughter, said she was
astounded. 

"Oh my God, how did he get that?" Mastrangelo said.  "My mother has been
dead 10 years."

In other developments yesterday:

* Attorney General John D.  Ashcroft released a four-page letter in
Arabic that was found among the belongings of men on three of the
hijacked jetliners.  The letter includes Islamic prayers, speaks of
death for a glorious cause, and reminds the reader not to forget his
knives and passport. 

The letter, first detailed in yesterday's Washington Post, demonstrates
how the Muslim hijackers "grossly perverted the Islamic faith," said
Ashcroft, who repeated that Muslims in the United States "deserve
dignity and respect."

Identical letters were discovered in three places.  One was found inside
a car parked at Dulles International Airport, starting point of the
flight that crashed into the Pentagon.  The second was found at the
Pennsylvania crash site of United Flight 93.  The third was found in the
Boston luggage of Atta, who was aboard one of the planes that plunged
into the World Trade Center. 

* Ashcroft said more than 480 people have been arrested or detained
during the first 18 days of a quest he has called the largest criminal
investigation in the nation's history. 

Although bin Laden has been identified by President Bush as the sponsor
of the Sept.  11 attacks, Ashcroft said investigators "have not ruled
out the participation of any individual or any organizations in this
attack."

* FBI Director Robert S.  Mueller III contested reports that FBI agents
have posed questions about political beliefs to Muslims, Sikhs and Arab
Americans who have been stopped or detained as part of the
investigation.  He said questioning focuses on relationships with the 19
suspected hijackers and their associates, and "may cross over into
relationships that may have sprung out of attendance at, for instance,
religious meetings.  But there is no effort to delve into either the
political or the religious beliefs of individuals."

* In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Secret Service arrested Youssef Hmimssa,
who had been wanted under the alias Jalali.  Authorities said they
believe he may have knowledge of a terrorist threat against former
defense secretary William Cohen. 

Hmimssa was indicted Thursday, along with two other men, by a federal
grand jury in Detroit on two counts of fraud.  During a Sept.  18 search
of a Detroit apartment, FBI agents seized false immigration papers and a
fake passport bearing the name Michael Saisa and a picture believed to
be that of Hmimssa or Jalali, two of five aliases cited by authorities. 
He was also wanted in Chicago on charges of financial-related fraud and
false identification charges. 

Agents also found a day planner that refers to the "American defense
minister" and contains an apparent sketch of the U.S.  air base in
Incirlik, Turkey.  Cohen canceled a visit to Incirlik last December
after learning of a "credible threat against him," according to a former
Department of Defense officials. 

Special correspondent Adi Bloom in London; staff reporters Sari Horwitz,
Lena Sun, Scott Higham, Fredrick Kunkle, Allan Lengel, Peter Slevin and
Marcia Slacum Greene, and researchers Bobbye Pratt and Margot Williams
contributed to this report. 

� 2001 The Washington Post Company

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get your FREE VeriSign guide to security solutions for your web site: encrypting transactions, securing intranets, and more!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/UnN2wB/m5_CAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

------------------
http://all.net/ 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Next message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:What.kind.of.Muslim.writes.like.this?]"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Protesters.March.on.Washington.to.Oppose.War.and.Racism.After.the.Terrorist.Attacks]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2001-09-29 21:08:52 PDT