By Edward T. Pound and Chitra Ragavan
Investigators are seeking to question more than 190 people who may have information that could aid in tracking down the terrorists involved in last week’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The so-called "watch list," which is being regularly updated by the FBI and other agencies, was obtained by U.S. News. It includes the names of the 19 hijackers killed in the three suicidal airplane crashes and some of their alleged associates.
The people include alleged associates of Osama bin Laden, the multimillionaire Saudi exile the Bush administration has accused of planning the attacks. The investigators are also seeking others who might be able to assist in tracking the movements of the terrorists who planned and executed the attacks, which killed thousands of people.
The FBI and other federal agencies already have detained 75 people for questioning, principally on alleged immigration violations, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft. In the largest and perhaps most complex investigation in its history, the FBI is pursuing thousands of leads across the country and overseas. It is being assisted by other federal agencies and local and state investigators around the country. No one has yet been charged.
Senior law-enforcement officials said the watch list includes the names of the dead hijackers because of concerns that other terrorists are using their identities. "You have to consider that someone else may be using their identification," said a source who provided the list to U.S. News. "This is a very fluid list–it is changing every day." He said the FBI has forwarded the list to international, state and local law-enforcement agencies.
A senior official in one federal agency said the FBI had given his agency significant "intelligence and specific information on lots and lot of people," requesting that people on the list be prevented from leaving the country.
The list demonstrates the difficulty of the massive investigation. In some cases, there are several different spellings of Arabic names. In addition, some witnesses have used aliases. The list include their names, any known aliases, their Social Security numbers, and their birth dates.
David Harris, a counterintelligence expert and former official in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said the FBI clearly had much of the information in its files before the terrorist attacks. But, he said, the bureau apparently did not understand what it had. "Americans had these individuals under some kind of surveillance," he said in an interview. "So often, in these things, the only thing you get wrong is the timing. You have networks identified. You have the individuals documented. So, your main preoccupation lies in deepening your understanding of these things."
Many on the list already have been detained. They include:
- Zacarias Moussaoui, 33, reportedly an Algerian, who was arrested on Aug. 17 while taking flight courses at a flight academy near Minneapolis. Moussaoui, born in France, is suspected of being a high-ranking operative of bin Laden, according to published reports.
- Mohammed Jaweed Azmath, who along with another man, were arrested in Fort Worth, Texas, last week with box cutter knives in their possession. Similar type knives were used by the hijackers. Azmath and an associate, Ayub Ali Khan, were apprehended as they boarded an Amtrak train. Azmath, Khan and a third man lived in a second floor apartment in Jersey City, New Jersey.
- Raed M. Hijazi, a Boston cab driver and purported operative for bin Laden. Hijazi now is under arrest in Jordan, where he is being tried by a military court on charges that he conspired with others to blow up holy sites in Jordan in an effort to kill Americans and others during the millenium celebrations on Jan. 1, 2000. The FBI is investigating any ties between Hijazi and two of the suspected hijackers, Ahmed Alghamdi and Satam al-Suqami.
The FBI is investigating whether other hijackings were planned by terrorists last week. At his news conference today (Sept. 18), Ashcroft said investigators have been unable to confirm there were any other plans, but they have not been able to rule out that possibility. He said investigators are following 96,000 leads.
At the same time, he said, every U.S. attorney in the country has been asked to establish an anti-terrorism task force "to create a national network" for combating terrorism. They work with state and local law-enforcement agencies in an all-out effort to stamp out terrorism. Said Ashcroft, "Our mission has changed."
