Wednesday, September 19, 2001

FBI seeking more than 190 people
Ashcroft says possibly more planes were targeted
By Pete Yost
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The FBI has detained 75 people for questioning and on immigration charges and has arrested at least four material witnesses in the terrorist investigation. Attorney General John Ashcroft declared Tuesday the government will “use every legal means at our disposal” to prevent further attacks.

“We are looking at the possibility that there may have been more than four planes targeted for hijacking,” said Ashcroft. The FBI has not been able to confirm that, he said.

Ashcroft announced new rules allowing suspected illegal immigrants to be detained for 48 hours, double the old period. He also announced the creation of an anti-terrorism task force with designees in every major city.

The attorney general said the task force would wage “a concerted national assault” against terrorists.

The government was looking for more than 190 people who investigators believe may have information about the attack, he said.

The FBI investigation of last week’s terrorist attacks has led to the arrest of four people as material witnesses. Aided by a federal grand jury, investigators are seeking more people who may have information about the plot, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.

One of the four material witnesses is Albader Alhamzi, 34, a Saudi national and Saudi-trained doctor who was doing a medical residency in radiology at University of Texas Health Science Center, said one of the government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. He was being held in New York.

Authorities also detained a man in San Diego, Calif., who was linked through financial transactions to two of the 19 hijackers, officials said. They declined to say whether he was arrested as a material witness.

As U.S. law enforcement officials pull in more people for questioning, a grand jury in White Plains, a suburb north of New York, will review evidence and issue subpoenas in the attack on the World Trade Center, according to a law enforcement source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

New details emerged Tuesday about law enforcement activity in the weeks leading up to the attacks, which the U.S. government has said it had no advance warning of.

The FBI came by the Airman Flight School in Norman, Okla., about two weeks before the terrorist attacks, inquiring about Zacarias Moussaoui, who is now in custody in New York in the investigation.

The FBI had a picture of Moussaoui and asked if people at the school could identify him and they also asked about his mannerisms and what he did at the school, said admissions director Brenda Keene. Moussaoui was detained Aug. 17 in Minnesota on immigration concerns after he aroused suspicions by seeking to buy time on a flight simulator for jetliners at a Minnesota flight school, law enforcement officials said.

Oklahoma school officials described Moussaoui as an impatient student who was not good at flying. But they said nothing about him led them to think he was connected to terrorists.

Ashcroft stressed the urgency of the moment Monday by saying that associates of the hijackers “may be a continuing presence in the United States.”

“It’s very likely there was significant ground support and reinforcement assistance from collaborators” for last Tuesday’s four teams of terrorists, Ashcroft said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” program.

The FBI is keeping a tight hold on its witnesses, jailing an unspecified number of them because they might otherwise flee. Courts have sealed all information about those arrested.

Asked to characterize whether those in custody were talking, FBI Director Robert Mueller said that “there are individuals cooperating, yes,” while adding that others were not.

U.S. officials have said Saudi Arabian exile Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida organization are the prime suspects in last Tuesday’s attacks. Bin Laden has denied any responsibility.

Ashcroft outlined the sky marshals plan along with additional details of the legislative package he asked Congress to pass immediately. It would include use of the money-laundering statutes to prosecute people who provide resources to a terrorist organization. The package also included nationwide wiretap authorization so that when a suspected terrorist moved around the country, law enforcement agencies wouldn’t have to get additional court approval for a wiretap in a different jurisdiction.

FBI agents pressed to learn whether any of those already in custody may have assisted the hijackings, were thwarted in their own efforts to hijack other planes or planned to carry out other attacks against Americans.

Among those being detained were two men who left on a plane from Newark, N.J., around the time of the attacks, and then took an Amtrak train to Texas from St. Louis after their plane was grounded as part of the government-ordered shutdown of the U.S. aviation system.

Ayub Ali Khan, 51, and Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, 47, were removed from an Amtrak train during a routine drug search Wednesday night. No drugs were found, but the men had box-cutting knives and about $5,000 in cash, according to a federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Hijackers in Tuesday’s attacks used knives and box cutters to commandeer the four airliners.

The FBI was aggressively questioning their acquaintances in New Jersey, where at least 13 people were being detained, officials said. Agents also raided apartments and questioned several people in a New Jersey neighborhood that was once home to blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, convicted of plotting the 1993 bombing of the trade center and other New York landmarks.

Khan and Azmath have been flown by authorities to New York.