Suspected Bomber Subdued on Flight

A man on an airliner carrying 197 people from Paris to Miami was wrestled into submission Saturday as he struck a match to light an apparent explosive in his shoe, and two Air Force fighter planes escorted the plane to a safe landing in Boston.

The only injury was to a flight attendant, who was bitten on the hand as she battled with the 6-foot-4 passenger.

The man was taken into custody by the FBI. An agency official said he carried British documents, including a passport, bearing the name Richard Reid. “But we don’t think we have a correct passport for him or a correct ID,” the official said late Saturday. “We don’t know yet who he really is.”

He was not believed to be of Middle Eastern descent, authorities said.

His shoe was drilled with holes, fitted with a wire and contained a flammable substance “consistent with” the explosive C-4, authorities said. That explosive was used in last year’s terrorist bombing of the U.S. guided-missile destroyer Cole at a port in Yemen.

FBI officials said it was too early, however, to tell if the airplane incident was part of a terrorist plot. “We simply don’t know,” said an agent, who declined to be identified. “Until we know something definite, we’re not going to say anything more.”

The incident occurred right before Christmas on one of the busiest traveling weekends of the year and prompted the FBI to send queries about the suspect to all other law enforcement agencies and to alert counter-terrorism teams with the CIA, the military and U.S. allies abroad. President Bush was briefed.

The plane, American Airlines Flight 63, was scheduled to leave Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris at 10:45 a.m. local time but didn’t depart until 12:22 p.m., or 6:22 a.m. EST. The cause of the delay was not immediately known.

While the Boeing 767, carrying 185 passengers and 12 crew members, was in flight over the Atlantic Ocean, one of the passengers began to act suspiciously, officials said.

“I’m told the flight attendant was drawn to him by the smell of sulfur from a lit match and then challenged him as to what he was doing,” said Thomas Kinton, interim executive director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan International Airport in Boston.

The attendant and others aboard the plane “literally tackled the individual and got into a wrestling match in an attempt to stop this action,” Kinton said. “We obviously had actions taken aboard that aircraft that prevented something very serious from occurring.”

Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift praised the flight attendants and passengers. “Their heroic acts may have potentially saved the lives of the nearly 200 people on board.”

The flight attendant was bitten during the struggle.

Once the man was subdued, two physicians on the flight used the contents of an on-board medical kit to inject him three times with sedatives, officials said. Passengers took off their belts and tied him into his seat, they said.

One passenger, Thierry Dugeon, 36, told Associated Press that he and several others piled onto the suspect during the struggle. “It was like everybody knew what they needed to do. It was pure instinct because it goes so fast.”

The passengers searched the man, said Dugeon, a TV reporter from Paris. He said they found the British passport, but the man claimed to be Jamaican. Dugeon said nobody believed him.

The man was wearing high-top basketball shoes, and he had tried to ignite the front of one of them, Dugeon said.

Even when the suspect was sedated, Dugeon said, the passengers took turns watching him while the crew showed the movie “Legally Blonde.”

The pilot decided to divert the Florida-bound flight to Massachusetts, and the U.S. Air Force sent the two F-15s aloft to guard the plane as it approached the United States.

The jetliner landed at 12:50 p.m. EST without further incident. Police, fire and bomb squads stood by.

Paramedics took the flight attendant to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was treated and released in good condition.

Officials X-rayed the suspect’s shoe “and found that in the heel, there were holes drilled, and there looked to be a detonator wire and the substances consistent with [the explosive] C-4,” said Laura White, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Port Authority.

The shoe was taken to an FBI laboratory for further analysis, White said.

“There was a test positive for explosives, but that’s all we know,” said one FBI official in Washington. He said it would take further tests to know whether it was C-4 or another substance in a wide range of flammable materials.

White said that the suspect apparently was traveling alone and that he boarded the plane without luggage.

Bush, who was at Camp David, Md., was notified and received at least one additional briefing from senior White House officials, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said.

“The White House has been monitoring the situation since we first became aware of it,” McClellan said. “The investigation is ongoing. The FBI is the lead agency.”

FBI agents in Boston, where the suspect was being held for investigation of “interference with a flight crew,” said they were pursuing a wide range of possibilities.

The suspect could be a disgruntled loner looking for attention, they said, or he could be affiliated with Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network, which has a strong presence in Britain and France.

The plastic explosive C-4, they noted, has been used in several Al Qaeda operations, including the October 2000 bombing of the Cole, which killed 17 American sailors and injured 39 others.

Part of the investigation focused Saturday on the suspect’s passport, a vital tool for terrorists and especially a suicide bomber trying to bring down a flight.

Officials said the possibly fraudulent passport might have been issued in Belgium three weeks ago, which fit into a pattern of past terror activity by Al Qaeda. Britain and Belgium are important operational centers for the terrorist organization.

Both countries figured in the Sept. 9 assassination of Afghan Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masoud by two Tunisian suicide bombers who lived in Brussels. The suspects carried stolen Belgian passports that were prepared by a fake document ring of Tunisians operating in Belgium, Britain and France, according to investigators.

At least part of the preparation of those passports took place in London, where the assassins received allegedly fraudulent Pakistani visas before flying on to Pakistan and making their way to Afghanistan, investigators said.

In Boston, the FBI worked late into the night questioning the suspect. Their investigation was monitored by top Justice Department officials and by Bush himself, authorities said.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller have warned twice in recent months of a possible second wave of terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda.

Its terrorists hijacked American Airlines and United Airlines jetliners Sept. 11 and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., and into an open field in Pennsylvania.

When asked for American Airlines’ reaction to apparently being targeted again, spokesman Al Becker replied: “No one really understands all the details behind this. We are working very closely with the police and the FBI on it.

“It looks like we’re going to be able to get all the passengers on their way to Miami tonight.”

American, United and Southwest airlines reported that the incident had not caused any passenger cancellations.

“We haven’t seen any backlash,” said Whitney Brewer, a Southwest spokeswoman.

But the incident raised questions about scrutiny at DeGaulle airport.

Security there has been visibly tightened since Sept. 11. Teams of tactical police and heavily armed paratroopers in camouflage uniforms patrol the terminals. Passengers are screened by airline security personnel before check-in and then by French national police and government security officials at passport checkpoints and baggage screening areas.

Screeners have been confiscating scissors, nail clippers and other items that might be used as weapons.

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Mehren reported from Boston and Meyer and Miller from Washington. Times staff writers Sebastian Rotella in Paris, Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington and Anna Gorman in Los Angeles contributed to this report.