Bomb-Making Materials Seized by Yemeni Officials

Local investigators in Yemen have seized bomb-making equipment in an abandoned dwelling near the Port of Aden, and several men who stayed there may be linked to the suicide bombing of a U.S. warship here, an American official said Tuesday.

The FBI official in Washington said the discovery appeared “significant” but warned that it was too early to know if the raid by Yemeni authorities would help identify the people behind Thursday’s deadly attack on the guided missile destroyer Cole. The official, who is involved in the investigation, requested anonymity.

The possible break in the expanding investigation came as Navy divers and engineers using metal-cutting equipment recovered the remains of six of the 17 crew members killed in the massive blast.

The recovered remains were found in the mangled wreckage above and below the ship’s waterline and included two bodies that had been visible but unreachable since the blast, according to Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, head of the task force sent here to head the recovery effort.

Divers were still searching for the remains of six sailors presumed to be inside the ship’s crushed interior compartments. The bodies of five other victims were flown home for burial last week.

Besides the 17 fatalities, 39 crew members were injured in the blast. An initial group of 33 was returned to the U.S. on Sunday. Four more arrived Tuesday. Most are being treated at Portsmouth Naval Medical Center in Hampton Roads, Va., or have been released.

Two sailors whose injuries preclude extensive travel were listed in stable condition at the U.S. military’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

President Clinton and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen were scheduled to attend a memorial service for the dead and missing crew members at 11 a.m. today at the Norfolk Naval Station, the Cole’s home port in Virginia.

U.S. officials familiar with the initial reports from Yemeni authorities said they were still trying to evaluate information about what one called a “house filled with explosives.”

There were conflicting reports as to whether two, four or six men had stayed in the dwelling for several days before the bombing. All apparently have now disappeared.

Yemeni security officials told Associated Press that the occupants were from Saudi Arabia, but that could not be confirmed independently.

The men were believed to have entered Yemen four days before the bombing, Yemeni officials said. They did not say from which country the men had arrived.

U.S. officials said they had not yet determined if the explosives and other equipment recovered in the dwelling could be matched to the sophisticated charge that was used to blast a 40-by-40-foot hole amidships in the Cole.

In Aden, U.S. Ambassador Barbara Bodine refused to comment on the reported breakthrough but said the investigation had made a “quantum leap” since it began.

“We have already received some information from the Yemenis that provides some significant leads,” Bodine said at a news conference here. “From yesterday to today has been a quantum leap, but I don’t want to go into the details of that because of the integrity of the investigation.”

She indicated that some suspects might have been located. “We have not found all the people that may or may not have been behind this, and for that reason there may be people out there,” Bodine said.

She warned that it is unlikely the investigation will be wrapped up any time soon.

FBI and Navy investigators, explosives experts and evidence-collection specialists combed the Cole for a second full day in an intense effort to determine how the bomb was constructed. Investigators even confiscated the torn and charred uniforms worn by some of the victims and survivors.

Experts said the bomb probably contained at least 600 pounds of high-grade explosives and was carefully packed to cause maximum damage to the Cole’s half-inch-thick armor-plated hull.

The device apparently was carried aboard a motorized wooden harbor boat that approached the Cole without warning as the warship was preparing to refuel. Witnesses saw two men standing in the boat just before the explosion.

Their identities, motivation and possible sponsors or accomplices remained a mystery Tuesday. “There’s still no particular group or suspect that we can point to,” a State Department official said.

Suspicion nonetheless continued to focus on Osama bin Laden, the wealthy Saudi fugitive who is under U.S. indictment for allegedly orchestrating the terrorist bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. More than 220 people were killed in those attacks, and the Clinton administration retaliated by firing cruise missiles into a purported Bin Laden terrorist training camp in eastern Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan.

Bin Laden was reported to have issued his first public statement since December 1998. According to a Pakistani newspaper account, the Saudi militant warned that another attack against him would not succeed and vowed to continue his battle against the “enemies of Islam.”

The statement did not specifically refer to the Cole bombing. The Taliban regime in Afghanistan, where Bin Laden has received sanctuary, has denied that Bin Laden was involved in the attack on the warship.

A U.S. intelligence official said the statement was being studied.

“There’s no telling who it’s from,” the official said. “It’s purportedly from Bin Laden. . . . We have no idea who is the author.”

The FBI assigned John P. O’Neill, special agent in charge of the national security division of the bureau’s New York field office, to run the investigation here in Aden. About 60 FBI agents are on the scene.

A Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, said the stricken Cole “remains stable” and is providing its own electric power after several days of emergency repairs.

Two more warships--the Anchorage, a dock landing vessel, and the Duluth, an amphibious transport dock--arrived in Aden’s harbor Tuesday to provide extra berths, laundry, food, communications, cargo helicopters and other support facilities to the growing force of U.S. personnel taking part in the investigation and salvage operations.

A third vessel, the amphibious assault ship Tarawa, was due to arrive today, Quigley said. The three ships carry a total of 2,100 Marines. A Navy tugboat was also en route, he said.

Quigley said the Navy signed a $4.5-million contract with the Norwegian owners of the heavy-lift ship Blue Marlin to carry the crippled Cole back to a U.S. port after investigators finish their search for evidence. He said it remained unclear where the Cole will be taken for repairs.

The Blue Marlin, now in the Persian Gulf port of Dubai, will head for Aden later this week and is expected to arrive four or five days later, Quigley said. He said it could take another week to prepare the 8,600-ton Cole for loading and piggyback transit.

An engineering assessment team from the Naval Sea Systems Command at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard has been deployed to Aden to assist in the loading and salvage operations.

“You’ve got to make sure that you do your naval architecture computations quite precisely, to make sure that you certainly do no further damage to the vessel and she is adequately supported as she is lifted out of the water onto the Blue Marlin, and head on from there,” Quigley said.

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Drogin reported from Washington and Kelly from Aden.