On Terrorism's Trail
How the FBI unraveled the Africa embassy bombings
At the FBI's makeshift command center, the excitement rose. Agents burst into the command center after interrogations, shouting about what leads to follow. "We are getting close to our aim," Mbuvi told Horan. "We are breaking through."
Other agents began to follow the trail of money to the bombers. Funds were traced through bank accounts at the Saudi-backed Greenland Bank in Dar es Salaam and through Islamic service organizations in Nairobi. Kenyan officials shut down five of the groups, and a FBI-CID team hauled away documents from one, Mercy Relief International. But following the funds has not proved easy. "We know where they sent the money," said one agent. "We don't yet know how."
Agents had better luck following the paper trail the bombers left behind. Officials in East Africa were sticklers for bureaucracy, and their records were voluminous. Telephone bills, vehicle registrations, entry-exit records--all proved useful in tracking the terrorists. From the Hilltop Hotel, investigators traced a call from the bombers to the Comoros Islands, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Horan's agents worked with local police there to track Mohammed, the explosives expert fingered by Odeh. The agents apparently had just missed him. Two days after the FBI's query, investigators believe he slipped out of the islands to Dubai and disappeared. But at his home, agents found incriminating letters and computer disks tying him to al Qaeda and a U.S. citizen named Wadih el Hage. Ostensibly a tire repairman in Arlington, Texas, officials say, Hage had served as a top bin Laden aide during the early 1990s and was tied to terrorists who had bombed the World Trade Center and killed 18 U.S. soldiers in Somalia.
U.S. intelligence already had linked bin Laden to a half-dozen terrorist incidents, including the bombing of U.S. military trainers in Saudi Arabia and the murder of dozens of tourists in Egypt. Two months before the embassy attacks, a federal grand jury in New York had secretly indicted the Saudi exile for his role in Somalia. Now, with growing evidence from Africa, U.S. officials expanded their assault on bin Laden's organization, sparking arrests in at least six countries. Prosecutors in New York filed criminal complaints against Odeh, Owhali, and Mohammed. Then, two weeks ago, in a sweeping indictment, the Justice Department added their names to those of bin Laden, Hage, and another top aide, charging the entire group with conspiracy to commit murder in the embassy bombings.
Bin Laden remains in Afghanistan, protected by the fundamentalist Taliban militia. But those pursuing the man believe he cannot hide forever. If he is captured and brought to trial, the evidence found in the rubble of East Africa may yet prove his undoing.
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