[iwar] [fc:Jubilant.Calls.On.Sept..11.Led.To.F.B.I..Arrests]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-29 07:23:02
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New York Times
October 28, 2001
Jubilant Calls On Sept. 11 Led To F.B.I. Arrests
By Neil A. Lewis and David Johnston
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - Within hours of the terror attacks on Sept. 11, law
enforcement officials say, F.B.I. agents intercepted telephone calls in
which suspected associates of Al Qaeda in the United States were overheard
celebrating the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
In the following days, the officials said, agents swept in and arrested them
and have been holding them since, some as material witnesses, based on the
information picked up in the phone calls. They are among hundreds of people
detained after the attacks.
Agents made the requests for the intercepts barely minutes after the planes
crashed into the World Trade Center, knowing from past terrorist acts that
Osama bin Laden's followers often phoned to congratulate one another after
successful operations.
The agents' requests quickly paid off. While the precise contents of the
intercepted phone calls have not been disclosed, officials have said some
were congratulatory, even gloating. 
Yet it remains unclear whether the people involved in the conversations were
participants in the plot, or merely exulting in the audacity and
destructiveness of the attacks on the American "enemy." The authorities have
not said whether any of the people detained on the basis of the intercepts
were cooperating, but none have been charged with crimes related to Sept.
11.
Law enforcement officials have said that, before Sept. 11, they did not
believe they had sufficient evidence to ask a court to authorize wiretaps of
people suspected of being Al Qaeda sympathizers. But after the attacks, the
requests were quickly approved. 
Among the people arrested as a result of these intercepts and other
information are several material witnesses in the case, the officials said,
although they would not identify them or discuss the contents of the
intercepted communications. They did say that the tone of the conversations
was happy - good cheer at the success of the attacks, a pattern of behavior
that paralleled what occurred after the bombing of the United States
Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998.
The officials would not say how many people were detained through the
telephone intercepts, nor would they discuss evidence that any of them
proved to be Al Qaeda members or other militants planning specific terrorist
actions. The intelligence officials said, however, that the intercepts and
the resulting arrests helped form the basis of assertions by senior
government officials that they thwarted separate terrorist plots in the days
after Sept. 11.
The most that law enforcement officials said about the fruits of the
detentions arising from the telephone intercepts was that they believed they
had netted Al Qaeda sympathizers who might have been in the very early
stages of terrorist plots.
Intelligence officials said they had aimed their efforts at bin Laden
associates because they believed it was impossible to catch Mr. bin Laden
through electronic intercepts. Officials said they had learned that he had
made it a firm practice since August not to use or even go near electronic
communications devices.
One official said intelligence reports showed that Mr. bin Laden began this
practice because he believed that Israel was able to assassinate a
Palestinian leader in Ramallah on Aug. 27 after tracing electronic
emanations from his cellphone.
One official said Mr. bin Laden now used associates as messengers, who make
cellphone or satellite calls after they have left him. This official said
previous reports that Mr. bin Laden had called his wife in Syria shortly
before the Sept. 11 attacks to advise her to return to Afghanistan were
incomplete. In fact, the official said, Mr. bin Laden had someone else call
his wife with that message. The call was made away from Mr. bin Laden's
hideaway.
As of today, United States law enforcement authorities say they have
arrested 977 people in connection with the investigation into the Sept. 11
attacks. The bulk of those arrested have been charged with immigration
violations or criminal violations. A far smaller group is being held on
material witness warrants.
Mindy Tucker, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said this week that the
authorities had not released most of the names of those held because the
identities of some material witnesses were under seal. She said the
department would not disclose the names of those arrested on immigration
violations because privacy issues must be resolved.
But many civil liberties advocates have said they are worried that the large
number of arrests may be improper. David Cole, a lawyer with the Center for
Constitutional Rights, said, "It's remarkable how little information is
available about these people."
Mr. Cole added: "It begins to feel like those countries where they lock
people up and don't tell anyone about it. That's not how this country was
run until Sept. 11."
One senior law enforcement official said the new wiretaps principally
produced information about Al Qaeda associates in the United States and
their activities. But investigators have not learned more about the Sept. 11
attacks from those detained.
The wiretaps being used against Al Qaeda are authorized by a special court
in Washington that hears requests from the government to conduct
surveillance against anyone who may be connected to a foreign intelligence
operation. The new antiterrorism law signed by President Bush on Friday is
supposed to make it easier for federal investigators to obtain eavesdropping
authorization. Under the law, officials have to assert only that foreign
intelligence is a part of their need; before that, it had to be the only
purpose.
In addition to the efforts against Al Qaeda, officials said they renewed
their interest in people who might know something about the crash of
EgyptAir Flight 990 off Nantucket in October 1999, suspecting a connection.
But officials said they had not determined any link between that crash and
the attacks of Sept. 11. United States investigators say they feel strongly
that the crash was the result of an unexplained suicide effort by the
plane's co-pilot, but Egyptian officials have angrily rejected that
conclusion.
Under the law that created the special court, the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, the subjects of eavesdropping may be American citizens or
foreigners.
The surveillance act, first passed in 1978 after Watergate and other
revelations of abuses by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central
Intelligence Agency, created a legal framework allowing the government to
spy on suspects considered dangerous to American national security. 
This year, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. began an investigation of
formal requests to the court that administers these requests after
complaints that agents had sought to eavesdrop on people who were already
subjects of criminal investigations - apparently a violation of the rules.
Despite the recent problems, applications to the special court have surged
in the last decade, for espionage and terrorism investigations. Last year,
the government made 1,005 applications under the act for electronic
surveillance and physical search warrants, according to an April report from
Attorney General John Ashcroft to Congress. The court approved 1,003 of the
applications in 2000 and the final two in January 2001.

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