Hitting the Wall

By John Cloud

Not long after Sept. 11, an FBI agent got a call from one of his usual targets, a guy in the Mafia he investigates regularly. The real-life Soprano joked that if the bureau needed help persuading a suspected terrorist to talk, the interrogation experts in the Mob would be happy to oblige.

The agent later recounted this story with a laugh. But now, seven weeks after the terrorist attacks, several key suspects in U.S. custody remain uncooperative even as investigators continue to warn that another deadly assault will come soon. Last week the Washington Post reported that some frustrated officials were actually discussing whether to seek approval for using truth drugs on the detainees. (The FBI denied the story.) Another option, since the U.S. would not formally condone torture, is to extradite the most intransigent detainees to allied nations known for bare-knuckle police work--a legally questionable move made on rare occasions even before Sept. 11.

Investigators may be vexed by the silent, suspicious few--who, sources say, number 10 at most. But many of the other 970 or so detainees have reason to be annoyed too. No evidence links the vast majority of them to terrorists. The evidence against some detainees is provocative but inconclusive, as in the case of several who were arrested after the FBI intercepted celebratory phone calls among them in the hours following the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the New York Times. To be sure, many detainees have been charged with immigration violations or other crimes unrelated to terrorism. Yet some have been imprisoned for weeks in cramped conditions, often without access to telephones or Muslim meals, according to their lawyers. San Diego attorney Randall Hamud says he has three clients who were treated "like animals," shackled in chilly cells and thoroughly strip-searched twice a day. One has been released, but the other two have been charged--one on an immigration violation and the other with lying to the grand jury about knowing two of the hijackers. Hamud says his clients knew the hijackers only casually and had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Authorities will say virtually nothing about the detainees in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, where Hamud's clients were held, but federal prison officials have said they are trying their best to meet inmates' needs. Attorney General John Ashcroft has instructed all Justice Department employees to ensure that detainees' rights are protected.

Last week Congress dramatically expanded the government's power to detain those designated as suspected terrorists. Under the new law, those individuals can be held for questioning for up to seven days without being charged with a crime (the old limit was 48 hours). In special cases, the government can renew the detention orders for as long as six months. The Justice Department sought these powers partly because the Sept. 11 inquiry has shown how difficult it is to root out terrorists who hide as law-abiding citizens. But the policy of rounding up all suspects has irked some agents who generally prefer to keep targets free and under surveillance in the hope that they will yield more clues. "I've spent the past two weeks talking to many of the same people I talked to in the first two days, and I'm not getting a whole lot more," says an agent in the field.

But what will it take to get more? What happens to the innocent when authorities veer toward the fringes of the Constitution in order to find the bad guys? For the past three weeks, TIME has investigated both the detainees and their keepers to answer that question. Government documents and interviews with those on both sides of the detention cells offer a rare glimpse inside the biggest--and at times most confusing--criminal probe in American history.

Take the puzzling case of Mohammed Refai. Until Sept. 18, Refai, 40, whose brother says he was a civil engineer in Syria, managed the Gas O Clean in Akron, Ohio. On that day, the Immigration and Naturalization Service detained him on the charge that he had married an American only to get a green card. According to documents reviewed by TIME that were written by federal investigators in early October, Refai "showed deception" on a lie-detector test. Agents wrote that they had unearthed financial information linking hijacker Saeed Alghamdi to an Akron apartment complex where Refai lived. A search of Refai's residence and business turned up cigarette lighters with concealed knives--perfect for a hijacking--and videos of "buildings, bridges and power plants" in Chicago; Niagara Falls, N.Y.; and Washington. Agents learned that he had talked about naming his son Osama.

For a time, all this evidence might have convinced some agents that they had found a "player"--FBI-speak for a solid terrorist prospect. Detectives always look for patterns among criminals, and Refai's factitious marriage was similar to that of some suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Germany, who married German women only to gain immigration rights. But last week a law-enforcement official in Ohio said flatly that Refai is not a terrorist. The official said there was no known connection between Refai and the hijackers, Osama bin Laden or any other terrorists.

Refai and his defenders have offered some plausible explanations for the evidence. Despite documents that allegedly link him and one hijacker to the same building--documents the government has never produced--Refai says he never knew Alghamdi. The videos of Niagara Falls and other cities? Tourist shots, Refai claims--and not a power plant among them. Refai, who spoke to TIME from an INS detention center in Batavia, N.Y., admits he sold the lighters with knives at his gas station, but so do many others. He did suggest Osama as a name for the child, but not because he was sympathetic to bin Laden. "[The historical figure] Osama was close to the Prophet," Refai explains. "I worked 15, 16 hours a day...I didn't have time to plot."

Susan Refai, 42, said she believes her ex-husband is innocent but now realizes that their marriage was a sham. It came about after a hasty courtship that started in January 1998 because "I felt sorry for him. He didn't speak English very well, and he was all alone." Well, not all alone. Mohammed apparently has another wife in Syria plus a new girlfriend here. "Oh, he was a bad boy," says his friend Ramzi Shalash. "But he didn't have anything to do with terrorists. We'd never even heard of al-Qaeda," Refai's brother Ayman says Mohammed's legal bills are mounting; many friends are afraid to help. Ayman says that even though his brother's rent has been paid, his landlord has evicted him from the apartment.

Law-enforcement officials say that in a climate in which immigration violations are fully prosecuted, a sham marriage to gain permanent-resident status cannot be dismissed. In a way, officials might explain, the system worked as it should for Refai. He was investigated carefully, and so far authorities have found evidence linking him only to serious marital issues, not terrorism.

As for why people like Refai are detained for so long, authorities point out that detective work takes time. Many of the detainees are purposely deceptive; their lives before Sept. 11 are mysterious. Consider Faisal M. Al Salmi, a Saudi Arabian charged with lying to FBI agents when he denied speaking with Hani Hanjour, the hijacker suspected of flying into the Pentagon. Prosecutors say Al Salmi and Hanjour spoke several times, at least once about aviation. They say Al Salmi has a private pilot's license and receives financial support from unknown sources in Saudi Arabia.

Al Salmi claims a five-year-old Arizona boy as a dependent child for tax purposes, according to federal documents reviewed by TIME. But the boy's uncle, Jamie Valderas of Wheeling, Ill., says his nephew Mervyn isn't related to Al Salmi. (Valderas says the boy's mother's purse was stolen in 1999; it contained Mervyn's Social Security card.) Last week Al Salmi pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Phoenix on charges of lying to federal agents. Gerald Williams, his public defender, says his client took a polygraph test that shows he was not involved in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Perhaps not, but cases like his will keep investigators busy for years to come. Their time is also taken up by detainees like Mustafa Abu-Jdai, 28, a rare bird who actually claims he was connected to the hijackers. Abu-Jdai, a Jordanian of Palestinian descent, says that three men, including hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi, offered him money last winter to take flying lessons. He says he declined, and his wife and attorney now hope his information might help the FBI crack the hijacking case. But the FBI says Abu-Jdai failed a polygraph, and agents believe that he made up his story about Al-Shehhi to gain leniency; his visa ran out more than a year ago. "He's an idiot," says Lori Bailey, a spokeswoman for the Dallas office of the FBI. She says the bureau has had to waste valuable time investigating his lies. Abu-Jdai stands by his story.

By now, the FBI has satisfied itself that nearly all the detainees had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Most of those who appeared to be accomplices in the frantic days after the attacks are just mundanely waiting for the INS or the courts to hear their cases. For example, Ali Al-Maqtari has been held at the West Tennessee Detention Center for more than 40 days without bond while he awaits a hearing on the charge that he overstayed his visa. He and his wife Tiffinay were detained Sept. 15 when they drove up to the gates of Fort Campbell, Ky., a U.S. Army base where Tiffinay was to report for active duty as a private. A search of their car turned up two box cutters, correspondence in Arabic and a set of postcards picturing the New York City skyline. But the box cutters were used for moving, attorney Michael Boyle contends, and Al-Maqtari, an Arabic speaker from Yemen, had visited his uncle in New York. Authorities don't consider the Al-Maqtaris to be important to the Sept. 11 investigation.

The names of those few who remain suspicious are well known. They are the ones who aren't talking. Zacarias Moussaoui, for example, was arrested in August on immigration charges after he expressed interest in learning how to maneuver but not land planes. It turns out that French officials have long believed Moussaoui was connected to terrorist groups. The FBI would also like more information from Ayub Khan and Mohammed Azmath, who were arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, on Sept. 12 with hair dye and thousands of dollars in cash in their possession. They had taken a train from St. Louis and were traveling on phony Indian passports. Last week the FBI told the New York Times that when the two were found, they had shaved off most of their body hair. An inspirational memo in some of the hijackers' belongings instructed them to "shave excess hair from the body"; the reasons are unknown.

The FBI believes the most helpful leads in the Sept. 11 case will come not from those detained in the U.S. but from Germany, where Atta and other terrorists lived and the seeds of the hijackings were probably planted. Still, agents hope those detained here can help them identify patterns that will distinguish members of sleeper cells from innocent bystanders. And there's always a chance that a detainee who appears innocuous may turn out to be hiding something. "Understandably, nobody wants to be responsible for releasing the wrong person," says Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. "Even though the vast majority don't have a terrorist bone in their bodies, they are not being given the benefit of the doubt right now." Nor for a long time to come.

--Reported by Anne Berryman/Atlanta, Hilary Hylton/Austin, Broward Liston/Orlando, Laura Locke/ San Francisco, Siobhan Morrissey/Miami, David Schwartz/Phoenix, Elaine Shannon and Michael Weisskopf/Washington and Maggie Sieger/Akron

With reporting by Anne Berryman/Atlanta, Hilary Hylton/Austin, Broward Liston/Orlando, Laura Locke/San Francisco, Siobhan Morrissey/Miami, David Schwartz/Phoenix, Elaine Shannon and Michael Weisskopf/Washington and Maggie Sieger/Akron