Gains and Gaps in Sept. 11 Inquiry

Six months after the Sept. 11 skyjackings, the Justice Department is planning to send specially trained federal counterterrorism prosecutors to Europe to help press charges against the dozens of suspects taken into custody in recent months.

Officials said they hope to reinvigorate law enforcement and intelligence gathering efforts that have achieved major success on some fronts--most notably by preventing numerous attacks against U.S. embassies and other facilities abroad--but also remain frighteningly incomplete.

Investigators have failed, for example, to apprehend the “middle management” terrorists who provided money, false identification documents and other support to the 19 hijackers from hide-outs in Germany, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.

Until they and their associates are identified and captured, U.S. officials warn, other deadly attacks are almost certain to occur. And what’s worse, they fear that Al Qaeda’s increasing reliance on independent terrorist operatives--as opposed to more traditional “cells” that can be monitored by Western intelligence--has made detection more difficult than ever.

The gaps in the case are huge. Despite the largest investigation in U.S. history, officials still cannot determine whether anyone assisted or supervised the 19 hijackers after they arrived in the United States. In interviews, U.S. law enforcement authorities confirmed that they are still pursuing such evidence, citing Al Qaeda’s history of having a senior member on scene just before an attack.

And although U.S. officials have rattled the public with repeated warnings about possible follow-up attacks since September, they have yet to determine who might lead such an attack or where and when it might occur.

U.S. law enforcement officials say they are searching for dozens of people around the world who may be tied to the 19 skyjackers who aimed three jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and crashed another in a Pennsylvania field. But they admit the case might never be fully solved.

“Maybe we never will have a complete picture of everybody who participated in any way,” said Assistant Atty. Gen. Michael Chertoff, who heads the investigation for the U.S. Justice Department.

“But I think we’re now beginning to see . . . links between people who were involved in Sept. 11 and people who have been involved in other [terrorist] groups overseas and other attempts overseas.”

Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network, which forged many of those links, has been hurt by the loss of its sanctuary in Afghanistan, by thousands of arrests and interrogations, by increased electronic and other high-tech surveillance, and by the freezing of assets of allegedly allied individuals and groups. But the danger clearly remains.

“Anybody who is out there who is part of this, that we don’t have in custody or who isn’t dead, is a threat,” Chertoff said.

As an example, he said whoever helped suspected lead skyjacker Mohamed Atta during his still-unexplained visits to Spain before the attacks “presumably is available to help somebody else do something.” Another unsolved mystery: why Atta and another hijacker traveled to Portland, Maine, to board a connecting flight to the jet they used in the attack.

“They were very savvy in how they set it up,” former FBI associate deputy director Oliver “Buck” Revell said of the hijackers and their co-conspirators. “They made it very difficult to track and trace even after the fact.” While the Pentagon and CIA have focused on capturing or killing Bin Laden and his top commanders, the FBI and other criminal investigators have concentrated on those who acted as go-betweens with Atta and the other skyjackers, as well as other terrorist cells.

“The critical thing is the middle management,” Chertoff said. “Based on [Al Qaeda] history, there is some level of approval at the top, but also some degree of delegation” to people who helped with planning and operational details.

Some of those suspected terrorists may never be caught or prosecuted, he added. Others may be recruited as informants in the effort to prevent attacks. And some may simply be charged with other crimes to take them out of circulation.

“In some cases, you don’t have sufficient evidence to hold them for a real long time, but you can make their life miserable for a while, which is worth doing,” said one official.

The initial FBI-led dragnet for those responsible for Sept. 11 has expanded into a far more international undertaking. Administration officials have engaged in high-level efforts to coordinate overseas law enforcement, intelligence and financial agencies. Special counterterrorism prosecutors will be deployed to Europe, for example, to support efforts by local authorities to prosecute suspects in custody and to track down those still at large.

“This has become truly a global investigation, and we realize we need to put people closer to where the action is, and to establish better relations with other nations,” a Justice Department official said.

Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill traveled through the Middle East last week, for example, meeting leaders of four nations to shore up attempts to identify and seize terrorists’ assets. So far, officials said, more than $100 million in assets has been frozen, although it’s unclear what impact--if any--that has had.

O’Neill said the financial crackdown has significantly hampered Al Qaeda’s ability to move money and troops. But one senior federal law enforcement official questioned its value, saying Al Qaeda moves most of its money through untraceable cash, diamonds and gold.

At home, federal authorities are girding for the long haul. The Justice Department has asked Congress to give authorities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, expanded power to take DNA samples from the more than 300 war detainees there and include the information in a national DNA database for use in investigations.

“These people are changing their names, they’re changing their appearances. DNA is the only thing they can’t change,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock.

The most dramatic signs of the investigation’s progress have been overseas. Since last fall, Washington and its allies have detected and disrupted potential attacks against U.S. facilities and interests in, among other countries, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, Italy, Jordan, Macedonia, Singapore, Turkey and Yemen.

The plots had few common links beyond the obvious: to kill large numbers of Americans.

“Some have ties to Al Qaeda, or have people who have been through the Afghan [terrorist training] camps, or have received financial support from Al Qaeda,” said a U.S. intelligence official. “But you can’t show a single hand on every thwarted plot.”

The largest known plot was in Singapore. Officials there say members of an Al Qaeda affiliate planned to simultaneously detonate seven truck bombs against U.S. and Western embassies as well as U.S. warships, planes and companies. Suspects have been arrested in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, but several key figures in the regional Al Qaeda network remain at large.

Overall, the investigations have produced arrests in more than 60 countries, not including Afghanistan.

The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said about 500 people have been arrested in the Middle East and Pakistan, 250 in Europe, 150 in Asia, 75 in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, 50 in Latin America and 50 in Africa. The official said about half of those arrested remain in custody.

“Their significance varies, but it’s mostly regional,” the official said. “That is, they’re mostly important in the countries where they were rolled up.”

Authorities have also seized hundreds of thousands of financial, communication and travel records. They even have tracked terrorists through cyberspace, as increasingly sophisticated operatives and their supporters sign on from Internet cafes and libraries to communicate.

Despite those efforts, FBI Director Robert Mueller cautioned that it may take decades to finally solve Sept. 11. In a recent briefing with reporters, he likened the case to that of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

Now, 14 years later, “without a question or doubt, there are others who played a role in Pan Am 103 that have still to be identified,” said Mueller, who headed that probe as chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division--Chertoff’s current job.

The Sept. 11 investigation has proved far more difficult, in part because Al Qaeda, which means “the Base” in Arabic, has used new techniques to evade scrutiny and surveillance.

For years, authorities believed Al Qaeda was a loose network of cells and affiliated groups around the world. Each had a hierarchy, and most had at least some members trained at paramilitary camps in Afghanistan. The cells enjoyed wide autonomy but maintained clear ties to Bin Laden’s “command and control” structure in Afghanistan.

But since September, authorities have found a previously unknown substructure of “sleeper” jihadists who operate as independents. As such, they avoid formal cell structures--and the surveillance those structures attract.

These rootless militants hold no allegiance or tie to any one group, said an FBI official who has spent years investigating Al Qaeda. They may link up with others to plan an attack on a U.S. embassy or military facility, but then quickly disband.

“These are people who share the same ideologies, but who will formalize [their relationship] for just one event and move on,” said the FBI official, who described them as “affinity groups” of terrorists.

The alliances “are always shifting, which makes it impossible to investigate” them, said the FBI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. He said their ranks have grown as zealots have returned from Afghanistan to communities where extremist groups are under close scrutiny.

As an example, terrorist experts point to Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person indicted in the United States for his alleged participation in the Sept. 11 plot.

Investigators have found no evidence showing Moussaoui was in direct contact with any of the 19 skyjackers.

They also cite Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomb suspect. An apparently rootless Briton, Reid was arrested Dec. 22 after being subdued aboard a transatlantic flight while allegedly trying to light powerful explosives hidden in his sneakers.

Senior officials say they believe Al Qaeda changed tactics after law enforcement and intelligence efforts determined traditional cells bombed two U.S. embassies in Africa in August 1998 and a U.S. warship in Yemen in October 2000, killing 241 people altogether.

In contrast, the Sept. 11 skyjackers “broke up into [groups] of one, two or three, they operated in various communities around the country and the word cell, I think, does not accurately describe their activity,” Mueller said.

Moreover, the hijackers “came into the country with a specific objective in sight and showed substantial discipline in not contacting Al Qaeda supporters or sympathizers who might have been known to us,” Mueller said.

“Every time we adopt or adapt some new ploy” to identify and root out terrorists, Mueller added, Al Qaeda attempts “to adopt a procedure to circumvent what we have done.”

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft also voiced concerns about the morphing of Al Qaeda. Sept. 11, he said, was a “fragmented attack,” conceived in Afghanistan, planned in Germany and perhaps Southeast Asia and carried out in the United States. That strategy, he said, shortens the “interval for detection” of the hijackers’ activities in any one place.

Law enforcement officials say they believe most of the 19 skyjackers--including 15 from Saudi Arabia--flew alone to America and avoided any kind of terrorist support network here.

“There’s certainly no strong evidence” of others being involved in the United States, said one federal law enforcement official who asked not to be identified.

But Chertoff said U.S.-based collaborators have not been ruled out. In several past plots, he noted, a senior Al Qaeda operative was sent to supervise planning but then flew out several days before the attack.

“I have no doubt that there were senior leaders who were involved to some degree or another in planning this,” Chertoff said. “They may have used the same MO they’ve used in the past, or they may have changed it. But obviously those are people we are interested in finding . . . whether or not they were actually on the scene.”

U.S. authorities have questioned or detained thousands of people since Sept. 11, and at least 300 remain in custody. None has been charged with terrorism. About 10 others are being held under sealed indictments, but officials say none has been tied to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Still, intriguing leads remain.

In Virginia, Mohamed Abdi, a Somalia-born U.S. citizen whose name and telephone number were scrawled on a map found in the abandoned car of one hijacker, ultimately pleaded guilty to unrelated charges. His lawyer said Abdi has no connection to the hijackers, but authorities say they are skeptical.

In Jacksonville, Fla., the FBI is continuing to check several people who may have met Atta and another suspected hijacker, Ziad Samir Jarrah, at area hotels and strip clubs that Atta frequented, according to an internal FBI memorandum.

Backed by a grand jury that has issued more than 115 subpoenas, FBI agents in the Jacksonville area recently checked hotel records, phone logs, flight school data and other records that might shed light on the hijackers’ contacts.

Investigators also administered lie-detector tests to several people who are suspected of knowing more about Al Qaeda than they have revealed, the memo says. But no conclusive links to Al Qaeda or the hijackings appear to have been established.

Bin Laden, who U.S. authorities say is chiefly responsible for Sept. 11, has disappeared, as have his top commanders. Whether Al Qaeda will survive if he is captured or killed remains a matter of sharp debate.

Bin Laden “isn’t the problem,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters recently.

“The problem is that there are global terrorist networks in this world beyond Al Qaeda. If he were dead today, there are 10, 15 other people who could run that network.”

Others say Bin Laden is irreplaceable--and that Al Qaeda will morph again when he’s gone.

“If Bin Laden is killed or captured, there is no identified successor capable of rallying so many divergent nationalities, interests and groups to create the kind of cohesion he fostered among Sunni Islamic extremists around the world,” Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in written testimony last month to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“Bin Laden is synonymous with Al Qaeda, and the media attention he has garnered, along with his charisma and other attributes, have made him an inspirational rallying point for like-minded extremists,” Wilson said. “With Bin Laden’s removal, the network most likely will eventually fragment under various lieutenants pursuing differing agendas with differing priorities.”