U.S. Seeks Inside Information From Convicted Terrorists

Authorities are seeking the cooperation of convicted Islamic terrorists in their investigation of the Sept. 11 hijackings and in their renewed effort to identify terrorist “sleeper cells” in the United States, law enforcement sources said Friday.

Similar efforts are underway in Canada, Britain, France, Belgium, Germany and other countries, according to authorities and terrorism experts.

Dozens of militants in custody in the United States and abroad have inside knowledge of global terrorism organizations and their suspected leaders, including Osama bin Laden. Some have taken part in plots that targeted airlines, airports and the World Trade Center.

They include Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, leader of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing conspiracy and of a plot to detonate bombs on a dozen airliners, and Ahmed Ressam, who planned to bomb Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999.

“No stone is being left unturned, no potential connection unchecked,” said a federal law enforcement official who confirmed the undertaking on the condition of anonymity. “[U.S. authorities] are talking to everybody.”

In exchange for information, authorities might offer leniency in sentencing or better prison conditions and accommodations in some cases, the official added.

The convicted terrorists could serve as valuable guides for federal investigators who have difficulty navigating the shadowy underground network of Islamic holy fighters, authorities said in interviews.

Reliable inside information provided by these convicted terrorists could prove valuable in three areas, authorities said: in the immediate investigation, helping to determine who was behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon; in the months to come, as the United States and its allies seek to dismantle terrorist cells here and abroad; and in seeking evidence of the kind of state-sponsored terrorism suggested by President Bush and his aides in remarks this week.

LAX Bomb Case Has Led to Cooperation

Since the attacks, sources said, federal authorities already have talked to Algerian militant Ahmed Ressam in his cell at the SeaTac federal detention center outside Seattle. Ressam’s defense lawyers had no comment.

Ressam was convicted in April of conspiring with three others to place a suitcase packed with powerful explosives in a crowded LAX terminal around New Year’s Day 2000 “to punish America,” according to a federal prosecutor.

After his conviction, Ressam agreed, in exchange for sentencing leniency, to provide authorities with extensive information about the terrorist underground and Bin Laden’s training camps. He faces a long prison term for the LAX bomb plot, but his sentencing has been postponed.

Isabelle Kirshner, a lawyer for Ressam co-conspirator Abdelghani Meskini, said she thinks authorities also are planning to interview her client.

“I think they’re going to go back” and interview Meskini, Kirshner said. “They have to go back. He certainly had enough contacts in the Algerian and Arabic community who were all involved in illegal activity that they believe was ultimately connected to terrorist activity and funding it. So I think it would be a serious oversight if they didn’t do it.”

Law enforcement and intelligence sources say Ressam, Meskini and convicted co-conspirator Mokhtar Haouari were involved in an aggressive North African terrorist network linked to Bin Laden. Their potential value in the ongoing investigation took on new significance this week, with the arrest of five North African men in the Midwest suspected of having links to the suicide hijackers and perhaps to Bin Laden as well.

Ressam spent more than seven months in Bin Laden’s terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and has specific knowledge of the exiled Saudi’s jihad operation and Al Qaeda, his terrorist network.

Authorities said they hope Ressam can place these five suspects, the hijackers and others allegedly involved in the attacks within the larger context of the global jihad movement.

Authorities also said they think Ressam traveled within the United States with the help of unindicted confederates in Seattle and possibly New York, Chicago and Detroit. They now want information on those so-called sleeper cells to see whether they, or similar operations, helped finance the Sept. 11 attacks or shelter the hijackers as they made their plans.

Meskini, who lived in Brooklyn, also became a government informant earlier this year to gain a lighter sentence for his role in the LAX plot. Authorities want to know whether he ever crossed paths with the suspected hijackers and their potential accomplices during his time in New York, Montreal and Boston.

Federal authorities said they think convicted terrorists, including those already cooperating, can provide them with valuable information about active jihad networks in New York, New Jersey, Boston and other cities that have been linked to the suspects in last week’s attacks.

Others, including Ali Mohamed and Jamal Ahmed Al-Fadl, are former top aides to Bin Laden who have direct knowledge of his command structure and his vast network of followers in the United States and elsewhere.

Some Convicts Have Extensive Ties

Mohamed was perhaps the first Bin Laden turncoat to tell U.S. authorities about the existence of expertly trained Islamic militants hidden around the United States. Al-Fadl has extensive knowledge of Bin Laden’s corporate fronts and financing.

Yousef and another man, Omar Abdel Rahman, also have long associations with terrorist organizations.

Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian sheik, was convicted in October 1995 along with nine co-defendants on charges of conspiring to wage urban warfare against the United States. The men were accused of plotting to blow up the United Nations headquarters and the FBI field office in Manhattan and two commuter tunnels linking New York and New Jersey.

Federal agents thwarted the plot in June 1993, four months after the Feb. 26 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six, injured more than 1,000 and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Yousef and a follower were later convicted of that bombing.

Yousef also was convicted of an ambitious plot to attack America by placing bombs on a dozen commercial airliners.

One test run succeeded, killing one and injuring 10 on a Philippine Airlines flight in December 1994. A month later, authorities shut down his plot to crash 11 U.S. airliners and kill 4,000 passengers.

Yousef’s defense lawyer, Bernard Kleinman, said he was told authorities wanted to talk to his client last week. Given the horrific toll of most recent attacks, Kleinman said, he wouldn’t object to Yousef’s cooperation.

Investigators hope Yousef and Abdel Rahman can help shed light on the workings of terrorist cells in New Jersey and New York, where at least 20 people have been detained in connection with the recent attacks.

Both men have maintained extensive connections to militants in those states, even though they have been in custody since the mid-1990s, authorities said. Rahman also remains an important figure in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization that has essentially merged with Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist organization and has been connected to several of the accused hijackers, authorities said.

Some of the convicted men have already provided a significant amount of information to authorities since agreeing to cooperate in terrorism investigations in New York, Seattle and other cities.

But that was before the events of last week, which have produced a torrent of new information and new questions for investigators.

Authorities want any information these convicted terrorists may possess about the 19 suspected hijackers--including their real identities--and the dozens of others detained in the investigation. They hope these insiders will help them connect the dots of the obviously well-coordinated conspiracy, law enforcement sources said.

“There is some suspicion that maybe they knew something and didn’t say” about the hijacking plot, said one source. “Everything is being reconsidered now. Everything.”

Authorities also say they want to talk to the terrorists not just about potential suspects in the current case but also about those suspected of participating in prior terrorist conspiracies but never prosecuted.

FBI agents and prosecutors said they have tried to keep tabs on the unindicted suspects but are often overwhelmed with high caseloads. They concede that in some cases they have lost track of some minor unindicted co-conspirators.

Yousef, for instance, was convicted twice--along with just a handful of other men--for terrorist attacks and plots that clearly indicated the involvement of a far larger group of conspirators, Kleinman said.

In court, Ressam identified almost a dozen cell members who have not been prosecuted.

Defense lawyer Ronald L. Kuby has represented accused terrorists and says that he knows of more than a dozen Islamic militants in prison who had previously cooperated with authorities and would be valuable in the current investigation.

“It will all be done extremely secretly,” Kuby said. “None of the Islamist defendants who are convicted want to be known as informants, and it’s certainly in the government’s interest to keep the cooperation secret because many of them have friends on the outside” who may go underground if they know those in custody are cooperating.

Federal agents and prosecutors won’t approach defendants in their prison cells or even have them moved to a private room because that would raise suspicion among fellow inmates attuned to even the slightest variation from routine.

Said Kuby: “They’ll stop them at their job in the prison, pick them up when they go to sick call or when they make a court appearance.”