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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (14365)	3/11/2003 3:20:30 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

U.S. Suspends U2 Flights After Threat WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iraqi fighter jets threatened two American U-2 surveillance planes, forcing them to abort their mission and return to base, senior U.S. officials said Tuesday. A Pentagon official said the decision to end the mission "in the interest of safety." The U-2 planes were flying missions at 2 a.m. Iraqi time for the U.N. weapons inspectors when Iraq launched fighter jets. According to two of the officials, the threat was directed against one of the two planes, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Multiple flights are permitted under a U.N. Security Council resolution approved last November, and the Bush administration sought clarification from U.N. inspectors after the U-2 flights were suspended. Their surveillance opertions are considered a major tool in checking on Iraq's weaponry, but there are other means, as well. The U.N. inspection agency, known, as UNMOVIC, had given advance notice to Iraq of the flights, said the U.S. official. The Iraqi threat is fresh evidence of Baghdad's unwillingness to cooperate with U.N. inspectors, another U.S. official said. Two American U-2 planes were already in the air, the senior official said. He said they were the seventh and eighth sent on a surveillance assignment since the council approved the resolution unanimously, and that the flights had been coordinated with the U.N. inspection agency. But Iraq "raised a fuss," this official said, and the two flights were recalled. American diplomats are checking with the U.N. agency before resuming U-2 flights, the official said. The dispute punctuated a behind-the-scenes effort by the United States and Britain to win support for a new resolution designed to back the use of force as a last resort to disarm Iraq. U-2 flights are conducted as part of an elaborate inspection arrangement designed to determine whether President Saddam Hussein has secretly stored chemical and biological weapons in defiance of U.N. resolutions. Typically, Iraq is notified in advance of overflights of Iraqi territory. khnl.com

To: lurqer who wrote (14365)	3/11/2003 4:02:36 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 89467

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