Terrorists Are Difficult to Profile

At first glance, Richard C. Reid doesn’t fit the image of the stealthy, disciplined, highly trained terrorist that was burned into the public imagination by the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Reid, accused of trying to ignite explosives-packed shoes on an American Airlines flight bound for Miami, showed up at Charles de Gaulle airport Dec. 21 with no luggage other than a knapsack containing a Koran. Passengers thought the shaggy, 6-foot-4 Briton looked like a vagrant. Suspicious airline security guards referred him to police for questioning.

But Reid, 28, withstood lengthy interrogation and made it onto American Airlines Flight 63 the next day, suggesting he was better trained and more effective than he seemed, according to law enforcement officials.

As his case shows, there is no pat, ready-made profile for terrorist suspects. Despite a tendency to see successful attackers as icy professionals and failed ones as bumblers, the reality is more nuanced and contradictory.

“Just because the Sept. 11 group were cold, well-prepared, neatly dressed, does not mean they are all like that,” a French anti-terrorist official said. “Reid was very much in control of himself. They cultivate this psychological strength in the [terrorist] training camps.”

If Reid was a member of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, as investigators on both sides of the Atlantic suspect, his handlers may have chosen him because he was cool under pressure. In unseen ways, he did match the familiar profile of a jailhouse convert to Islam who plunges into the baleful world of extremism and journeys to Afghan terrorist training camps. And he had a rare cover: an Anglo name and a British passport.

Even his down-and-out appearance may have been a reverse undercover strategy, based on a calculation that he looked too obvious to be a real threat, experts said.

“He had one most important trait: He was very calm in an extremely stressful situation,” said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “He held up under interrogation, he spent a whole night knowing what he was about to do and he went back the next day to try to do it again . . . . He passed psychologically, even if he didn’t pass operationally, in putting the device together or activating it.”

Al Qaeda’s terrorist acts are often minutely planned and, like the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, choreographed for media effect. But the terrorism network’s history has also been marked by stumbles.

Algerian Ahmed Ressam, an Al Qaeda operative convicted of plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in late 1999, prepared for the act for more than a year. But he lost his nerve at a checkpoint at the U.S.-Canadian border and bolted from his car, causing U.S. inspectors to find a cache of explosives in the trunk.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the Frenchman indicted in the Sept. 11 attacks, was allegedly a seasoned veteran of the Afghan camps, but he was arrested in August when his suspicious behavior caused his flight instructors to alert law enforcement.

The Sept. 11 hijackers had lapses too. At least two left the country and returned on expired visas. Even Mohamed Atta, the alleged leader whose implacable expression has come to embody the hijackers’ precision, almost blew the whole thing. He reportedly became frustrated during flight training and abandoned a small plane on a busy runway at Miami International Airport--a serious breach of airport rules that could have drawn an investigation.

Atta belonged to a Middle Eastern elite within Al Qaeda. Reid, in comparison, appears to be second or third string, investigators said. French airport police have been criticized for failing to have him checked by an explosives-sniffing dog before clearing him to travel.

“What do you need, a neon sign not to let him on the plane?” a Western law enforcement official wondered. The official ticked off the warning signs: Reid’s Koran, a new British passport obtained in Belgium, no luggage, a ticket bought with cash days earlier.

But Reid did a good job of talking his way out of a tight spot. French police brought in experts in fraudulent documents and in Arabic language and culture for the interrogation, which continued at the airport hotel where he spent the night, according to French officials.

“Other than not checking the shoes, the officers did a very good job,” the French anti-terrorist official said. “He stayed very cool.”

His cool may have been refined with practice and coaching, police said. In July, Reid flew to Israel on El Al, the Israeli airline renowned for aggressive security screening. Law enforcement officials think he chose El Al to test himself against the best interrogators in the airline business. After a thorough questioning and search, El Al allowed him on the plane.

“It may have been both a training mission and a test: The two go together,” the anti-terrorist official said. “If you can withstand the questioning by El Al, you can take anybody else’s.” That alleged rehearsal is consistent with long-term planning, an Al Qaeda signature, the French official said.

U.S. and European investigators suspect that Reid underwent training at a clandestine camp in Afghanistan. The FBI is investigating accounts of captured Al Qaeda terrorists who identified Reid from a photo as a fellow trainee. And there is evidence that he made at least three trips from 1996 to earlier this year to Pakistan, the gateway to the camps.

Al Qaeda trainers increasingly emphasized psychological preparation during the last two years, according to experts.

Author Roland Jacquard, a French expert who is close to intelligence services, said: “Some Islamists, after psychological tests, are selected just for little logistical actions. They choose the best ones for commandos [attack teams].”

Aspiring suicide attackers are selected for quick thinking and mental toughness. They are trained to withstand police questioning and even torture, the anti-terrorist official said.

Terrorists are also taught to blend into Western society and keep a low profile. Not all of them, however, shave their beard and replace Islamic robes with preppy clothes. Some members of Takfir wal Hijra, a ruthless sect adept at disguises and spy tactics, wear their hair long and dress in a disheveled style reminiscent of the 1970s, the French official said. Takfir attracts European ex-convicts similar to Reid, though he has not been linked to the sect so far.

Reid’s look “could have been a role, a character,” the French official said, that suited him better than posing as a businessman. “His physical appearance did not give him the air of a Muslim extremist.”

Fellow Muslims and Reid’s father have described him as less than bright and easily influenced. But they also say he was streetwise; he was sharp enough to become an accomplished Arabic speaker, according to the European police official. Another law enforcement official described him as disciplined, saying that Reid stuck to a strict Islamic diet.

Reid’s preparations, police say, appear to have been compartmentalized for security purposes: It is suspected that he obtained the explosives in the Netherlands. He received his new British passport at the embassy in Brussels on Dec. 7. He bought the plane ticket at a travel agency in Paris.

After getting the passport in Brussels, Reid stayed a week at an inexpensive hotel near the Midi train station, a neighborhood with a large population of Muslim immigrants, according to law enforcement officials.

But investigators so far have not linked Reid to known Al Qaeda networks in Belgium, the Netherlands or France. A Tunisian-dominated network in Belgium and France has been implicated in the assassination of Afghan Northern Alliance military leader Ahmed Shah Masoud on Sept. 9. A predominantly Algerian group with cells in Belgium, the Netherlands and France allegedly plotted to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris; the suspects kept bomb-making chemicals in the same Brussels neighborhood near the train station where Reid stayed.

Reid appears to have laid low in Brussels, according to investigators. He told police at the Paris airport that he had been working odd jobs at hotels in Belgium and the Netherlands and had no fixed address.

“He clearly took some precautions,” the European police official said. “I’m convinced he didn’t act alone. But there are no contacts yet with known groups.”

Investigators are cautious about concluding that Reid was part of a full-fledged conspiracy but say he may instead have been “encouraged” to act by extremists.

Although the explosive compound he used is a favorite of terrorists, Reid’s criminal connections could have enabled him to find bomb-making ingredients without direct help from organized terrorism, the law enforcement official said.

“What’s being overlooked is that he was incarcerated. He developed friendships along the way. He can speak the language, walk the walk. If he made an attempt to buy explosives, it wouldn’t have been unknown to him how to do that,” the official said. “Did he know what he was buying?”

Investigators tend to think Reid probably needed help to prepare the shoe bombs and finance his extensive travel, however.

In the event that Al Qaeda used him for a suicide mission, the choice of a bomber who was not among the terrorism network’s elite could be a sign that it has been hurt. Or it could mean that strategists thought Reid had a better chance of success than other operatives. Being of Jamaican and British descent, he had a British name and passport.

Unlike hundreds of extremists who have been identified and are under intense surveillance in Europe, he had no previous contact with anti-terrorist investigators.

“He was not on anyone’s list,” Ranstorp said.

The profile of an ex-convict converted to Islam and launched headlong into violence is not uncommon. “It’s a motley crowd at the foot soldier level,” Ranstorp said. “One should be more worried about these people than the Bin Ladens.”

*

Rotella reported from Paris and Miller from London.