The Manhunt Goes Global

By John Cloud

Back when the U.S. fought wars abroad and crime at home--back when there was a difference between the two--it didn't matter if the CIA and the FBI hated each other. Or if the Pentagon had little interest in what New York City police were doing. Or if U.S. cops had no idea what their colleagues in France or Germany were up to. But in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, all of them are working together as never before. Lawyers may debate whether to label the culprits from that day as conspirators in a crime or as soldiers in a war, but the investigators know they were both. So thousands of law-enforcement, intelligence and military investigators from two dozen Western nations have banded together with a common mission: to find out who pulled off the attacks and stop their compatriots from mounting any more.

There are two fronts in the investigative battle. A "clean" army of investigators pursues leads according to rules of evidence admissible in court. Prosecutors in the U.S. and other nations will use this evidence to build cases against alleged terrorists captured since Sept. 11. President Bush said last week that nearly 150 suspected terrorists and supporters had been arrested in 25 countries. As of Sept. 30, the U.S. Department of Justice had made 383 searches under warrants and issued 4,407 subpoenas. Court cases arising from these Herculean efforts will drag on for years.

The "dirty" teams work faster, less concerned with legal finery and more intent on making a quick, persuasive case to the world that the attacks are the handiwork of Osama bin Laden. On this track, the CIA and other nations' intelligence agents use informants who aren't necessarily thuggish or unreliable but who could never appear in court; to do so would risk revealing their sources. That's why, as one CIA veteran puts it, "we only do dirty."

No matter. The source of the information doesn't matter to most people, who simply want to know if bin Laden did it. No significant military action can begin until American allies--particularly in the Middle East--can assure their citizens that bin Laden is the man responsible for Sept. 11.

Toward that end, the U.S. got a big boost last week from one of its staunchest allies. While the U.S. had presented its case against bin Laden to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization privately--asserting that secrecy is needed to protect sources--British Prime Minister Tony Blair last Thursday laid out much of that evidence for the world to see in a speech that was accompanied by a 4,500-word precis. (Though the U.S. didn't orchestrate the release of the information, which included some intelligence collected not by the CIA but by British spies, it was vetted by U.S. intelligence and approved in advance by the White House.) The British white paper alleges:

--One of bin Laden's "close associates"--the British won't say who--helped plan the Sept. 11 attacks.

--In the weeks before the attacks, "close associates of bin Laden were warned to return to Afghanistan" by Sept. 10.

--Bin Laden himself "asserted shortly before 11 September that he was preparing a major attack on America."

In addition, the white paper says "at least three" of the 19 hijackers have been identified as associates of al-Qaeda, bin Laden's organization. The document doesn't identify the three. But Bush Administration sources tell TIME that U.S. authorities have acquired evidence placing the suspected leader of the hijackings, Mohamed Atta, at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Other evidence suggests that Atta also met with senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, a top bin Laden lieutenant.

The British white paper alleges that one hijacker--identified by the New York Times as Khalid Almihdhar of Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon--played "key roles" in both the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Almihdhar was one of the first hijackers to sign up for flight lessons in the U.S., in early 2000.

Blair's presentation of the British case, combined with the U.S. evidence offered to NATO, seems to have been persuasive. A NATO diplomat told TIME that "the sheer weight of information"--rather than any single piece of intelligence--left the ambassadors of all 19 NATO countries "without a shred of doubt" about al-Qaeda's complicity. And on Thursday the predominantly Islamic nation of Pakistan gave the case against bin Laden a major vote of confidence when Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Riaz Khan said the Pakistani government sees "sufficient grounds for indictment" of the Saudi exile.

All this is heartening to U.S. investigators, who have few doubts about the connection to bin Laden. "It is so obvious, based on where [the hijackers] were, who they were talking to, the places they've been and their known telephone numbers," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. But pinning down the supporting details has been a painstaking process. U.S. prosecutors haven't yet been able to charge anyone with a direct role in the attacks, and investigators now believe few if any accomplices were in the country for significant periods before Sept. 11. And they are a long way from piecing together exactly how the attacks on Sept. 11 occurred. Last week the FBI office in Boston released a time line and photos of Atta and another hijacker as they visited Portland, Maine, the night before the hijackings. Agents are eager to find out why the pair went to Portland before flying to Boston (where they boarded one of the World Trade Center missions) and whether they met with anyone there, perhaps someone who drove down from Canada.

The most promising investigative progress over the past couple of weeks has taken place overseas. From its sprawling Special Information and Operations Center in Washington, the FBI coordinates the work of its 56 domestic and more than 30 foreign offices, which have rarely been busier. About 15 German-speaking FBI agents are in Berlin and Hamburg assisting roughly 400 members of German law enforcement working the case. This close cooperation with overseas investigators has produced some of the best leads so far. For example, foreign law-enforcement agencies have given U.S. officials access to prisoners connected with al-Qaeda. Some of these inmates have identified certain hijackers as fellow trainees from bin Laden's camps.

What's more, authorities in Europe may have uncovered several new components of the al-Qaeda network. One of the most startling discoveries came in France, where informants helped authorities foil an alleged plot to destroy the U.S. embassy in Paris.

A most helpful squealer in that case has been Djamel Beghal, a Frenchman of Algerian origin who was arrested July 28 for using a fake passport in the United Arab Emirates. In detaining him, U.A.E. authorities found themselves holding a veteran of al-Qaeda training camps who was being sought by France as a suspected organizer of Islamic extremists. At first Beghal would not cooperate with the U.A.E. police. So they sent moderate Islamic scholars to convince him that the murderous objectives of bin Laden and his ilk violate Islam's true tenets. It took a month, but eventually Beghal began cooperating, according to French officials.

And then he told them everything. He said he had helped direct a multicelled network that stretched across Europe. His network was preparing attacks on American targets in Paris, including the embassy, he said. Most important, Beghal said he had been given his instructions by Abu Zubaydah, a member of bin Laden's inner circle. And for good measure, Beghal provided his interrogators the names, locations and roles of the principal actors in his network, 20 of whom were later arrested.

Beghal has since recanted much of his confession, which he now says was extracted after days of mistreatment, not sermons, in the U.A.E. jail. But authorities say arrests made and evidence collected have confirmed Beghal's original story. "He provided us with some remarkably accurate information for not knowing anything," says a French investigator.

Those he named include Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian who had played pro soccer in Germany for several years. He was to blow himself up in the U.S. embassy, according to Beghal's confession. Instead, Belgian police arrested him in Brussels on Sept. 13. Among those nabbed in the Netherlands with Beghal's help was Jerome Courtailler, a French convert to Islamic extremism. Courtailler and his brother had lurched toward extremism during visits to London, where they attended the militant mosques of Baker Street and Finsbury Park.

The Finsbury Park mosque has attracted many extremists linked to bin Laden, including Beghal. (Zacarias Moussaoui also worshipped there. Authorities believe he would have helped hijack one of the planes on Sept. 11 had he not been arrested in August in Minnesota.) In fact, so many al-Qaeda compatriots find rooms near the London mosques between their trips to Afghan training camps that French antiterrorist officials have taken to calling the city Londonistan. According to a report by French intelligence services in Le Figaro newspaper last week, "London is a filter for bin Laden. The indoctrination sessions there are used to detect the weak ones, but also any adventurers, or intelligence-service moles. After that London step, recruits are sent to Afghanistan to suffer... It's only after that second test that the mujahed can be trusted as a sleeper, and wait for the signal to act." Last week Britain launched a sweeping crackdown on terrorists, promising new laws to make it easier to detain and deport terrorist suspects.

British officials aren't the only ones defending their security procedures in the wake of Sept. 11. Since evidence emerged that Atta and two other hijackers studied in Hamburg for years, German officials have been excavating the terrorists' lives. While German intelligence officers don't believe the attacks were directed from Hamburg, investigators have captured some possible midlevel accomplices.

On Sept. 27, authorities arrested three men in Wiesbaden. A search of their apartment turned up a gun, false passports and credit cards, and a receipt for a plane ticket from Germany to Pakistan. One of those arrested, Talip Tolgay, 27, a Turk, had reportedly created a website that included the e-mail address of Said Bahaji, a friend of Atta's in Hamburg. Officials have issued an arrest warrant for Bahaji, who they believe flew to Pakistan before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Investigators are also interested in Mounir El Motassadeq, a Moroccan student who allegedly transferred $950 to Atta in May 2000 and had power of attorney over the bank account of another hijacker. Reached by TIME last week, Motassadeq refused to answer any questions about his relationship with the two.

Should police have caught on to Atta's Hamburg cell earlier? Its members certainly weren't breaking any laws, at least not overtly. Atta and the other hijackers even paid the widely despised, often ignored tax on radios and televisions. "No normal student in Germany ever does that," says a German police official. Last week German officials released a profile of potential terrorists; an exemplary record of abiding by the law is among the warning signs. That helps explain why agents on the ground are so breathless in their chase. There's no other way to catch a violent criminal who is also a disciplined soldier.

--Reported by Massimo Calabresi, Elaine Shannon and Douglas Waller/Washington; Bruce Crumley/Paris; Helen Gibson and J.F.O. McAllister/London; James Graff/Hamburg; and Charles P. Wallace/Berlin

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, Elaine Shannon and Douglas Waller/Washington; Bruce Crumley/Paris; Helen Gibson and J.F.O. McAllister/London; James Graff/Hamburg; and Charles P. Wallace/Berlin