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US says man had ties to plot disrupt vote { August 8 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/politics/08plot.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/politics/08plot.html
August 8, 2004
THE INVESTIGATION
U.S. Says Man Had Ties to Plot to Disrupt Vote
By DAVID JOHNSTON
This article was reported by David Johnston, Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, and written by Mr. Johnston.
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 - A Pakistani man whose arrest provided information about the reconnaissance of financial institutions in New York, Newark and Washington was also communicating with Qaeda operatives who the authorities say are plotting to carry out an attack intended to disrupt the fall elections, a senior intelligence official said Saturday.
Senior intelligence and counterterrorism officials said it was not clear whether the people behind the surveillance of the financial institutions and the people involved in the election threat were part of the same group, or belonged to overlapping or separate ones.
The arrest last month of the Pakistani, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, had already prompted a search in the United States, Britain and other countries to locate the people behind the surveillance, which took place three or four years ago. Now the authorities say Mr. Khan's arrest is also helping them unravel a threat to carry out an attack this year inside the United States.
It is not clear whether Mr. Khan represents the second channel of intelligence that officials have alluded to in recent days that, they say, convinced them that the reconnaissance of financial institutions was related to current threats.
But he is emerging as a central figure in an expanding web of connections that, the authorities say, indicates that they may have penetrated an operational Qaeda group whose intentions were previously unknown.
Bush administration officials have talked about a potential threat to the election since the spring. Early last month, the homeland security secretary, Tom Ridge, spoke of a plot to disrupt the democratic process.
On Saturday, American authorities said they were close to identifying the main figures who conducted reconnaissance of the financial centers. Armed with multiple leads stemming from arrests in Britain and Pakistan, and aided by a wealth of information from forensic studies of computers seized in Pakistan, the authorities have begun a large-scale investigation.
Still frustrating investigators is the uncertainty about whether the surveillance in 2000 and 2001 was part of an ongoing plot. So far, the officials said, no clear evidence has been obtained that indicates whether the plot was ever abandoned.
Increasingly, however, the authorities suspect that the Qaeda figures believed to have been involved in the surveillance were active members of the terrorist network. They say the clandestine manner in which they operated suggested that they wanted to carry out attacks inside the United States.
Investigators are counting on people already in custody, or others whom they hope to apprehend, to help solve the mystery of whether the plot is still active.
Among those in custody is a suspect named Babar Ahmed, who was arrested in Britain this week at the request of the United States. Whatever his role in the surveillance, the authorities now say that Mr. Ahmed obtained detailed information about the movements of the Navy aircraft carrier Constellation, including information about the formations used by the carrier and its escort vessels in maneuvers like its passage through the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East in 2001.
As part of the inquiry, Navy officials examined the record of a sailor aboard the Benfold, a destroyer that was part of the Constellation battle group. Officials said they had found an e-mail message from the sailor - who has since left the service - that was sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
The officials said that a turning point in the surveillance case came with the arrest in Britain, earlier this week, of Abu Issa al-Hindi. The authorities say they believe Mr. Hindi was dispatched to the United States by senior Qaeda leaders to carry out the reconnaissance operation.
For reasons still not entirely clear, Mr. Hindi was under surveillance by the British authorities - believed to be acting on information supplied by the United States - even before he is said to have been identified as an operative in the surveillance of American financial institutions.
One senior counterterrorism official said the outpouring of leads had mushroomed into a sprawling investigation in which agencies in the United States and overseas were struggling to coordinate and share the enormous volume of information.
The inquiry has caused strains between the United States and Britain. There were signs that some British authorities might not have agreed with the White House decision to make public information about the surveillance operations. The news agency Reuters quoted the British home secretary, David Blunkett, as saying that there was "a difference between alerting the public to a specific threat and alarming people unnecessarily by passing on information indiscriminately."
Officials at MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency, have warned that the intense news media coverage in the United States of recent arrests in Britain could interfere with legal efforts to extradite suspects to the United States.
So far, American authorities have sought the extradition of only one person, Mr. Ahmed, who was arrested on charges unrelated to the surveillance operation. He is being sought on charges that he used a computer Web site to raise money for fighters in Chechnya and Afghanistan.
Mr. Ahmed is a cousin of Mr. Khan, a Qaeda communications expert whose arrest last month in Pakistan produced the trove of information that led American officials to elevate the terror alert level.
A report by Reuters in Pakistan said Mr. Khan had been secretly funneling information about Al Qaeda to Pakistani authorities and that his arrest and subsequent identification in news accounts may have cost the United States a valuable source.
American officials contacted on Saturday would not confirm whether Mr. Khan was a mole or double agent. They said his arrest had led to intelligence gains of enormous value in uncovering the surveillance operation in the United States.
Intelligence officials have also recently come into possession of information about how much Al Qaeda knew about Navy operations.
According to a statement from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, British law enforcement authorities, executing search warrants for several locations connected to Mr. Ahmed, "seized, among other things, a document that set forth plans for a U.S. naval battle group operating in the Strait of Hormuz in April 2001. The information contained in the document, which was classified at the time, has been confirmed as legitimate by the U.S. Navy."
The documents, according to the government statement, "included the battle group's planned movements on April 29, 2001, and a drawing of the group's formation. In addition, the document specifically noted that the battle group was tasked both with enforcing sanctions against Iraq, and with conducting operations against Afghanistan and Al Qaeda."
Most important, the statement said, "the document specifically described the battle group's vulnerability to a terrorist attack, and provides specific examples on how the ships might be attacked (e.g., 'they have nothing to stop a small craft with RPG etc, except their Seals' stinger missiles')."
The initials R.P.G. refer to rocket-propelled grenade, and Seals are naval Special Operations Forces.
For unrelated reasons, the Constellation was retired from service in August 2003. In addition, after the attack on the Cole, in October 2000, the Navy began "force protection'' measures for ships sailing into regions where attacks were deemed likely. Those measures remain classified.
American officials said the e-mail correspondence from the sailor from the Benfold occurred in July 2001. Navy officials said on Saturday that investigators had not found any evidence that the sailor was the source of Mr. Ahmed's information on the Constellation group.
The content of the e-mail correspondence "was sympathetic to the jihad movement," according to the immigration and customs statement. "The enlistee expressed anti-American sentiment and offered praise for the Mujahedeen, the attack of the U.S.S. Cole" and for those "who have brought honor" to the movement "in the lands of Jihad Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, etc."
David Johnston and Thom Shanker reported from Washington for this article and David E. Sanger from Kennebunkport, Me.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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