Cracking The Terror Code

This summer a second wave of hijackers slipped into the United States. These men were the muscle: their job would be to slit the throats of passengers and stab flight attendants (shouting "Allahu Akbar"--God is great!--as they "slaughtered the animals," as their instructions put it). Most stayed aloof. "You never heard them say a word," said Jamie Diaz, a neighbor of some of the men in Paterson, N.J. The apartment shared by hijacker brain as well as brawn in Paterson had no TV, no stereo, no furniture, except for three smallish mattresses on the floor for as many as six men. "Nobody ever saw them at mosques," said the city's mayor, Marty Barnes. "But they liked the go-go clubs."

The Qaeda men living in New Jersey apparently did not use electricity at times. A cost saver? Or Islamic asceticism? Investigators following the money believe there was plenty of it--at least $500,000 to finance the operation. But the money trail is well concealed. It leads from well-known commercial banks to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, a financial fog bank. Investigators are looking for a paymaster named Mustafa Ahmed, who appears to have at least 10 aliases, three dates of birth, three Social Security numbers and four addresses in the United States. He was last seen boarding a plane from Dubai to Kara-chi, Pakistan, on Sept. 11. NEWSWEEK has learned that U.S. intelligence is especially interested in bin Laden's possible dealings with a company once known as Al Taqwa Management ("Al Taqwa" is Arabic for "the wrath of God"). But the Swiss authorities have cleared Al Taqwa, which recently changed its name to Nada Management. Already privacy-minded European governments and banks are grousing about a "fishing expedition" and balking at checking bank records against a list of more than 350 names supplied by U.S. investigators.

The Sept. 11 plot was apparently planned abroad--but where? And by whom? Investigators have ransacked the "terror apartment" in Hamburg, Germany, that Atta shared with Ziad Samir Jarrah, one of the presumed Sept. 11 suicide pilots, along with at least two other possible conspirators now on the lam. One roommate, Said Bahaji, is believed to be the hijackers' logistics man, providing passports, IDs, apartments. The other, Ramzi bin al-Shib, tried and failed to get a visa for pilot training in the United States; significantly, he received a phone call sometime last summer from Zacarias Moussaoui, who was turned in to the Feds by a suspicious flight instructor in Minnesota last August. Had the FBI moved a little faster on Moussaoui, it's possible the Sept. 11 attack might have been averted. FBI officials are still sorting out why a request from the FBI's field office for permission to examine Moussaoui's computer hard drive--just two weeks before the attack--was turned down by headquarters, as reported by NEWSWEEK last week. The FBI knew from French intelligence that Moussaoui was an Islamic extremist, but he wasn't connected to any terror group--a prerequisite to getting a national-security warrant. The FBI agents in Minneapolis then sought a criminal warrant to search Moussaoui's computer. But they were again turned down because current federal law prohibits the bureau from sharing information in criminal probes with intelligence investigators. This bureaucratic stumbling block is being cited by federal law-enforcement officials as justification for easing the rules. After Sept. 11, gumshoes found incriminating evidence on the hard drive, including instructions on flying crop- dusters. Was Moussaoui planning some kind of chemical-weapon attack? Now in jail, the French Moroccan isn't talking. His mother, Aicha, interviewed over the phone by NEWSWEEK from her home in Narbonne, France, lamented that her son had been "brainwashed" into becoming an Islamic extremist. As a child, "he never cried or made a fuss," she said. "He didn't wake me up at night, and he was always laughing." But when teachers at his school told Moussaoui that he would be better off going to trade school, "he began to rebel." He started smoking hash and watching porn movies. "I'm glad that he didn't participate in the attacks," she said. "Maybe I'll write him a letter." She paused. "I don't know where to send it. I don't know anything now," she said. The FBI and CIA are going to have to know a whole lot more to stop the next attack.

Pat Wingert, Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman in Washington, Andrew Murr in Los Angeles, Jamie Reno in San Diego, Ana Figueroa in Las Vegas, Sarah Downey in Minnesota, Kevin Peraino Babak Dehghanpisheh in Paterson, Tara Pepper in London, Scott Johnson in Paris and Mark Hosenball, Christian Caryl and Stefan Theil in Germany

© 2001