Terrorism Suspects in U.S. Probed

The FBI has launched intensive investigations into at least 12 suspected terrorists living in the United States whose names were found in the possession of top Al Qaeda leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed after his arrest five days ago, federal law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Officials said they were particularly concerned that operatives connected to Mohammed could be in the country planning terrorist attacks that the FBI believes may be imminent. Such operatives may just be awaiting a “go” signal, or the onset of war with Iraq, the officials said.

The FBI said in an intelligence bulletin Wednesday that Mohammed’s arrest Saturday in Pakistan could prompt a series of retaliatory terrorist attacks in the United States as well.

“The FBI assesses that the capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed deals a severe long-term blow to Al Qaeda’s ability to plan and carry out attacks against the United States,” said the confidential weekly bulletin, which was sent to 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies.

“However, in the short term, the apprehension may accelerate execution of any operational planning already underway, as operatives seek to carry out attacks before the information obtained through Mohammed’s capture can be used to undermine operational security,” the bulletin said.

Mohammed is considered to be one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists because of his orchestration of terror plots around the world during the last 10 years, including the Sept. 11 attacks and other conspiracies in the United States. At the time of his predawn arrest at a safe house in Rawalpindi, the Al Qaeda operations chief was believed to be overseeing several planned attacks within the U.S., authorities have said.

Mohammed’s arrest, along with that of a top Al Qaeda paymaster, prompted a flurry of CIA and FBI activity after computers, computer disks, cell phones and other electronic gear were found in his possession. Those items contained a trove of information about Al Qaeda, including names and locations, U.S. officials said.

“It’s becoming apparent that whatever was retrieved from [Mohammed’s] safe house is already yielding important results,” said one federal law enforcement official, noting that the data indicated that Mohammed used his computers and cell phones to communicate with Al Qaeda associates in potentially scores of cells around the world, including in the United States.

Authorities contend that the arrest of Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, alleged to be Osama bin Laden’s top paymaster, could allow them to unravel the complicated web of Al Qaeda front companies that hide the group’s assets.

Federal authorities declined to name the dozen or so terrorist suspects or say where they live. The men already had been the subject of FBI scrutiny, including possible surveillance.

But their apparent connections to Mohammed has increased the FBI’s interest in them enormously in recent days, several federal law enforcement officials said, adding that some could be detained “imminently.” One FBI agent said that in the aftermath of Sept. 11, many people were detained at length simply because their telephone numbers or names were linked even peripherally to one or more of the 19 hijackers.

“I can’t imagine they were here for charitable reasons,” said one federal law enforcement official, in reference to those connected to Mohammed. “We will continue to surveil these guys in the hopes that they will lead us to other Al Qaeda operatives” in the United States.

In the bulletin, the FBI also linked Mohammed to several Al Qaeda plots. Among them: a so-called dirty bomb scheme in the United States that was thwarted in May 2002 that had also been linked to top Al Qaeda commander Abu Zubeida, who is in U.S. custody.

Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who had traveled widely in Pakistan, was arrested on arrival at a Chicago airport as he prepared to undertake what the Justice Department said was a scouting mission to trigger a low-level radioactive device, which could cause severe radiation contamination and sickness.

U.S. officials have long feared Mohammed was trying to detonate such a device in the United States, as well as launch other “catastrophic” attacks. He has boasted publicly about being the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and of being Al Qaeda’s military chief.

In their bulletin Wednesday, the FBI also linked Mohammed to the bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia last April, and a thwarted plot to bomb U.S. and Western embassies in Singapore the same year.

The bulletin identified other members of his family residing outside the United States as Al Qaeda members, including two nephews who are also related to Ramzi Yousef, the convicted leader of the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. One, Abd al Karim, “speaks English [and] is familiar with life in the United States from his years spent studying in North Carolina in the mid-1980s,” the FBI bulletin said.

One federal law enforcement official said the bulletin included the references to al Karim’s time spent in the U.S. because the FBI is concerned that he too may be involved in efforts to launch terrorist attacks within America’s borders.