Terror trails followed in 8 U.S. cities
Mohammed’s computers,
when decrypted, also yield
list of al-Qaida ‘safe houses’
March 11 -- Investigators are following a money trail to possible al-Qaida sleeper cells in the United States based on information in computers seized during the capture of two alleged al-Qaida leaders in Pakistan. NBC's Lisa Myers reports.
By Lisa Myers
NBC NEWS
WASHINGTON, March 10 — After cracking the encryption scheme on alleged senior al-Qaida leader Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s computers, government experts have uncovered new evidence of money transfers into the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks, triggering terrorism investigations in eight U.S. cities, senior U.S. officials tell NBC News.
THE OFFICIALS, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the password encryption on the computers seized when Mohammed and two other men were arrested March 1 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, was easily broken by CIA experts, who described the protection as surprisingly unsophisticated.
The computer data, along with documents seized in the joint Pakistani-U.S. raid, revealed that al-Qaida money transfers into the United States had continued after September 2001, the officials said. That triggered terror investigations in eight U.S. cities, seven of which are continuing, they said.
The laptops also yielded a list of Osama bin Laden’s “safe houses.” That accounts for increasing optimism among U.S. and Pakistani authorities that bin Laden is on the run and more likely to be captured, they said.
The CIA and FBI also are reviewing financial documents tied to Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, who was arrested with Mohammed in Pakistan, officials said.
Hawsawi, named as a supporting conspirator in the indictment of alleged would-be Sept. 11 hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui, is believed to have been the money man for bin Laden’s terrorist network.
The indictment traces a trail of money transfers to and from the United Arab Emirates, where al-Hawsawi allegedly coordinated payments for the Sept. 11 attacks. It charges that days before Sept. 11, some of the 19 hijackers who died on the four jetliners used in the operation wired tens of thousands of dollars of unused money back to al-Hawsawi.
U.S. and Pakistani officials said al-Hawsawi was not cooperating with his interrogators in an undisclosed country, but they called the documents a big break. The documents could provide “a direct link to potential terrorists,” especially to sleeper cells in the United States, one of the officials said.
INVESTIGATIONS IN EIGHT CITIES
Security experts called discovery of the information highly significant in breaking those cells.
Al-Hawsawi “knows where they are because every conspirator needs to get money,” said Steve Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project, a Washington research institute that studies international terrorism.
A senior U.S. official said people in New York, Detroit — home to one of the country’s largest Muslim communities — and six other cities were under round-the-clock surveillance while the FBI searched telephone records and bank accounts. The other cities could not immediately be determined.
The investigation in New York City led investigators to three men who were linked to the Pakistani man who owned the apartment in Rawalpindi where Mohammed and al-Hawsawi reportedly were arrested. After interviewing them, FBI agents concluded they were not terrorists, the officials said.
Officials cautioned that some of the other suspects also could prove not to be connected to terrorists, but security experts said the evidence was priceless regardless.
“Any leads coming back into the United States are very significant because they would confirm people either under investigation or actually provide new leads for investigators as to who is working or connected to Osama bin Laden,” Emerson said.
MJ Gohel, chief executive of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, an independent policy institution in London, went further.
“If the money trail is followed, I believe that the entire al-Qaida network around the world can be located,” Gohel said in an interview.
U.S. officials said the search for bin Laden had netted only low-level al-Qaida operatives so far in Pakistan, but they told NBC News that the breakthrough arrests of Mohammed and al-Hawsawi were reason for new optimism.
msnbc.com |
