Link Saudi agent
to Qaeda plotters
BY JAMES GORDON MEEK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - The FBI last year quietly nabbed a Saudi military official who had ties to Al Qaeda - just after he finished training in this country with the U.S. Air Force, the Daily News has learned.
The Saudi allegedly had knowledge of Al Qaeda safe houses and plans in the kingdom, intelligence sources said.
FBI agents stopped and quizzed the suspect and his family at a U.S. airport as they were leaving the country. The military man was allowed to return to Saudi Arabia, where he was detained and interrogated further, sources said.
As a result, arrests of other Al Qaeda operatives were made overseas, sources said.
"An Al Qaeda sympathizer who was in the Saudi military was here in training," said a senior U.S. official briefed on the case. "There were some significant rollups because of this."
The FBI discovered the man's ties to Al Qaeda and brought in Air Force Office of Special Investigations agents because he had attended one of the service's schools, the sources said.
Saudi Embassy officials in Washington did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.
The incident was disclosed in an OSI publication in a year-end column written by the group's commander, Air Force Brig. Gen. Eric Patterson.
"We spearheaded a successful anti-terrorism operation with the FBI, which identified an active Al Qaeda sympathizer who attended training at an Air Force technical school," Patterson wrote in Global Reliance magazine, a bimonthly read by OSI agents.
"We have since established a process to screen and monitor activities of foreign students to focus on early discovery of other possible penetrations. In addition to capturing that Al Qaeda member in the United States, 51 others were arrested overseas," Patterson wrote.
Other sources expressed skepticism that the number eventually collared was as many as Patterson claimed.
An OSI spokesman wouldn't say what type of Air Force training the Saudi officer got, but confirmed that an identified Al Qaeda sympathizer "was sent back to the host nation."
"Saudi Arabia continues to be the single biggest producer and fund-raiser of terror," said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn, Queens) after learning of the case from a News reporter. "When will we learn?" |
