Going after the bad guys
A massive investigation points to Osama bin Laden as the attack's mastermind

BY KEVIN WHITELAW

The detective work has begun. Buried in the flight manifest of one of the doomed airliners, investigators have discovered names of people they believe are linked to al-Qaeda, the shadowy network of Islamic terrorists headed by Saudi exile Osama bin Laden.

The clue on the passenger list is just one of hundreds of bits of evidence and tips the FBI is following up in what Attorney General John Ashcroft called perhaps the most massive investigation in American history. But even before the first evidence surfaced, bin Laden topped suspect lists. The coordinated, comprehensive, and ruthless attack bears the trademark of the hunted terrorist, who from remote camps in the mountains of Afghanistan had vowed just three weeks ago to carry out an "unprecedented" attack against American interests.

It was a boast American officials had to take seriously. Bin Laden's operatives had already demonstrated their skill and dedication three years ago when they launched two nearly simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, as well as last year's suicide assault against an American warship, the USS Cole. Still, the incredible feat of hijacking four airliners and striking at two symbols of American power–its money and military might–astonished even veteran counterterrorism experts. "They've probably tested this many times," says Robert Blitzer, former head of domestic terrorism for the FBI. "It was an absolutely brilliant attack."

Yet the attackers left footprints that federal officials are confident will be tracked back to the source. Eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency scrambled in the hours after to monitor phone calls, faxes, or E-mails that might contain messages of congratulations from members of the terrorist groups. Quickly, operators intercepted a phone call between two known associates of bin Laden; they were heard talking about hitting two targets.

The FBI, meanwhile, has 7,000 special agents and support personnel on the case and is reviewing the passenger manifests, rental car receipts, telephone logs, and even videotapes from parking garages and pay phones. Investigators are also searching for the black boxes of the planes, which may contain recordings of the last cockpit conversations. Besides identifying the hijackers, authorities are tracking down accomplices who might still pose a threat to America's air system. Indeed, there is still concern that other terrorist acts are possible. "The U.S. is not fully confident it is done," says a counterterrorism official.

The aggressive investigation is producing leads, and fast: Authorities in Boston identified five Arab men as suspects and seized a rental car; inside they found an Arabic-language flight training manual. In Florida, federal agents searched numerous homes and businesses in connection with the investigation.

Blame game. Though most intelligence sources seem convinced that bin Laden's operatives are behind the attack, the administration has been careful not to accuse him publicly. U.S. officials caution that evidence might show that other groups, perhaps Lebanon's Hezbollah, acted independently to stage the attack. Investigators are also looking hard at Algerian terrorists, who are tied to several millennium terrorist attempts. In 1994, an Algerian cell hijacked an Air France jet and threatened to blow it up over Paris.

It is the precision of this week's operation and its destructiveness that are steering authorities toward bin Laden as the prime culprit. "There is no other group or individual calling for coordinated attacks on the United States," says Larry Johnson, former deputy chief of the State Department's counterterrorism office. For example, bin Laden's followers had the ability to commandeer and fly commercial jets. U.S. News has learned that American intelligence officials had advance knowledge that al-Qaeda was recruiting and training pilots. Attorney General Ashcroft confirms that some of them received pilot training in the United States. Two suspects attended five-month courses at a Florida flight school at a cost of $10,000 apiece, according to its owner, Rudi Dekkers of Huffman Aviation.

The man who has built this terror empire remains hidden on secret bases scattered throughout Afghanistan, where he finances and inspires a vast, but loose, web of terrorist groups, from Egyptian Islamic Jihad to Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines. Cells have been identified in some 50 countries around the world–and if the FBI dragnet is correct, some of the cells are in unlikely American locales such as Portland, Maine, and South Florida. Bin Laden does not command his disciples so much as he helps facilitate their planning.

If bin Laden's al-Qaeda is behind this week's attack, officials will want to know whether the group got help, too. An operation like this one takes money, phony travel papers, and training–the sort of support that could be had from rogue states like Iraq or Afghanistan. A senior official tells U.S. News that Washington is looking at more than one–and as many as 10–countries that may be supporting groups linked to al-Qaeda.

State sponsors. The first regime that may find itself in America's cross hairs is the hard-line Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which has given bin Laden safe harbor for the past five years. Taliban officials–and bin Laden himself–deny that the Saudi millionaire is involved in this week's strikes, but President Bush has already put them on notice, saying that America will make no distinction between terrorists and those who "harbor" them. The United States struck Afghanistan once before, with a pinprick cruise missile attack against bin Laden's training camps following the 1998 embassy bombings. But targeting other states could be more problematic if evidence linked them to the attack. U.S. experts are even looking at whether likely suspects such as Iraq's Saddam Hussein cooperated on the attack.

Amid cries of a new Pearl Harbor, the finger-pointing has already begun. "We have a major intelligence failure here," says Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief. "To be caught completely with our pants down, it is just unbelievable." As spy agencies review weeks of intercepted phone calls and reports from field agents, they are likely to discover missed signals.

Indeed, in the weeks before the attack, U.S. officials were concerned about a possible terrorist attack, but their attention was focused on overseas targets. "That assumption may have had a distorting effect on how information was interpreted," says one senior U.S. source. Just last week, the State Department issued a new warning about an alert concerning U.S. forces in South Korea and Japan. And a senior U.S. official says that the government has been worried in recent days about an attack on U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf region.

The day before the attack on the Trade Center, two senior U.S. specialists–State Department counterterrorism director Francis Taylor and Defense Department terrorism official Austin Yamada–canceled planned trips abroad. The Pentagon denied any knowledge of Yamada's trip. U.S. officials insisted the Taylor cancellation was unrelated to any threat warning, but others say tensions were running high.

It is perhaps unfair to blame the intelligence community for failing to see the future, though it is precisely to prevent such catastrophes that the U.S. government spends $28 billion annually on spies and satellites. In their defense, U.S. intelligence agencies, working with other countries, have been able to avert a series of planned attacks, including operations in Jordan and the United States during the millennium celebrations.

Some analysts, however, believe those successes enabled bin Laden's resourceful followers to adapt their methods to avoid detection. Bin Laden, for example, stopped using satellite phones after learning that the NSA was eavesdropping. This year's trial in New York of the suspected embassy bombers revealed still more about U.S. intelligence methods. In addition, experts speculate that the recent warnings about possible attacks abroad might have been part of a disinformation campaign to mislead U.S. intelligence. Says a former counterterrorism official: "They devised this scheme through the cracks in our procedures."

So while Washington prepared for the worst, the terrorists delivered a low-tech blow. In an age where counterterrorism agencies can sound like Chicken Little–warning constantly about the risks of incoming ballistic missiles or of attacks with chemical and biological weapons–the weapons of choice here were decidedly not sophisticated. Instead of detonating a nuclear device or even a truck bomb, the terrorists transformed the airplanes into missiles, knowing full well the fully fueled jets would ignite infernos on impact. Rather than guns or plastic explosives, the hijackers wielded knives, according to frantic cellphone calls from panicked passengers. "It shows you the vast, almost endless menu of things that people who have this seething hatred of the United States can do," says John Gannon, the former head of the National Intelligence Council.

Airborne weapon. Airline hijackings were certainly not what officials were expecting. One recent secret Pentagon study, for instance, included vulnerability assessments of dozens of facilities such as reservoirs, airports–and skyscrapers. But the most serious airborne threat was considered to be a small private jet packed with explosives, which would barely have dented the Pentagon and almost certainly would not have collapsed the World Trade Center. A fuel-laden jetliner–not to mention three or four of them–caught even the most careful intelligence analysts by surprise. After all, the last attempted domestic hijacking was a decade ago.

Now the attack is giving new urgency to the debate over how to protect Americans at home, as well as abroad. Perhaps there is no defense against a suicidal pilot in control of an airliner. But security starts in places such as customs posts and airport security lines, both of which are already coming under intense scrutiny. "We have the equivalent of McDonald's handling security at our airports," says counterterrorism expert Johnson, "and it's time to take it seriously as a national security threat." America learned from last week's attack that although the terrorists' grand plan was complex, the tools were simple.

With David E. Kaplan, Edward T. Pound, Richard J. Newman, and Juli Cragg Hilliard