By EDMUND H. MAHONY
The Hartford Courant
September 16, 2001
Promising to ``smoke them out of their holes,'' President Bush plotted secret strategy with top advisers Saturday for a global war on terrorists. U.S. diplomats continued to line up international support, and FBI agents hunted down suspects still on the loose in this country.
Bush made his strongest remarks yet on last week's deadly terror attacks just before meeting under heavy guard with his national security team at Camp David in Maryland. Bush called wealthy Saudi exile Osama bin Laden ``a prime suspect'' in the suicide attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The president grimly warned bin Laden supporters that ``we're at war'' and that America is determined to ``win this war.''
During a radio address earlier Saturday, Bush conceded the struggle against an elusive enemy could be long and difficult. He predicted ``a different kind of conflict against a different kind of enemy'' and ``a conflict without battlefields or beachheads.''
``They will try to hide, they will try to avoid the United States and our allies -- but we're not going to let them,'' Bush said. ``They run to the hills; they find holes to get in. And we will do whatever it takes to smoke them out and get them running, and we'll get them.''
And Bush reiterated his promise to hunt down and destroy global terror's far-reaching infrastructure, a daunting challenge. Last week, the Congressional Research Service published a study suggesting that bin Laden's al Qaeda terror network has followers or operations in 34 nations stretching from Canada through Asia to the Philippines.
Some military experts have said the battle envisioned by Bush will have to far surpass previous American anti-terrorist attacks -- limited largely to missile strikes -- and could involve ground troops.
``I wouldn't rule out dropping in the 82nd Airborne Division or the 101st Air Mobile Division, or the Delta Force special forces guys,'' William Taylor, a defense analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Houston Chronicle. ``It wouldn't be an occupying operation. It would be to go, find and destroy.''
As Bush and his top aides discussed the next steps, aspects of the strategy began to emerge.
The developing strategy has four major components. One is a sustained attack on the perpetrators of Tuesday's assaults, presumably bin Laden and his sprawling multinational network. Second is a stepped-up campaign against countries that harbor or support terrorists, to deny terrorists the bases they now enjoy. Third is formation of a new worldwide coalition of anti-terrorist nations to carry on the fight. Fourth is the implementation of new security measures at home to make terrorism more difficult to carry out.
Even if the United States succeeds in capturing bin Laden, that might not destroy the network of terrorist groups he helped organize, so U.S. strategy gives equal priority to destroying bin Laden's financial network, which might be no easier than finding his followers.
Bush advised uniformed U.S. military personnel to ``get ready,'' but refused to disclose specifics of a possible American response.
``As we plan, as we put our strategy into action, we will let you know when we think it's appropriate -- not only to protect the lives of our servicemen and women, but to make sure our coalition has had proper time to be noticed, as well,'' Bush said. ``But we're going to act.''
There was evidence that Bush's words were being heard in the Middle East -- particularly in Afghanistan, where the hard-line Muslim fundamentalist Taliban movement has given sanctuary to bin Laden. Civilians were stocking up on food and water or trying to flee to neighboring countries. Taliban leadership threatened retaliation against countries in the region that cooperated with a U.S. strike.
While Bush and his most senior aides discussed military options, the business of searching for bodies was briefly overshadowed by high-profile funerals in New York and near the nation's Capitol.
Bone-weary rescue workers searched with diminishing hopes for survivors in the rubble of the trade center in New York and the crash-scarred Pentagon. The only thing to come out of the increasingly desperate work was a swelling body count.
Saturday evening, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's office released a partial list of victims and said 159 people had been confirmed dead, including 18 city firefighters. The number of missing was raised to 4,972.
The new figure came from missing person reports -- 1,200 were filed with police from outside the city -- and family members reporting to a Manhattan crisis center, New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik said. About 1,000 cars remained unclaimed in lots at commuter railroad stations in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
The increase virtually guaranteed that the death toll in the coordinated terrorist attacks will exceed 5,000.
For a fourth day, the search of rubble where the World Trade Center once dominated the skyline produced nothing but tons of wreckage, and none of the pings or knocks that might signal a survivor. Firefighters, dazed and exhausted, showed the strain of their fruitless hunt for life.
``They're drained,'' Greg Shriver, a volunteer firefighter from Connecticut, told the Associated Press. ``They have to rest up to go back. They've lost a lot of brothers.''
Relatives of the missing were asked for toothbrushes and other personal items that might provide material for DNA matches with body parts.
Also buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center, the New York Times reported, is some 13 tons of gold worth an estimated $110 million and 30.2 million ounces of silver valued at $121 million.
The precious metal was stored in vaults below 4 World Trade Center, one of the smaller buildings that collapsed in the attack on the twin towers, the newspaper said. It belongs to people or firms that trade futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Market officials said they were not overly concerned because the material is buried and secure, and there is a sufficent supply of the metals.
In lower Manhattan, streets and subways reopened and power was restored. Richard A. Grasso, chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, said trading would resume at 9:30 a.m. Monday. The exchange, which has been dark since the attack, passed a readiness test Saturday.
Although New York's heroic rescue effort promised to restore at least a slim portion of workplace normalcy Monday, the weekend also brought the first clear signs of the attacks' economic impact. Continental Airlines announced plans to lay off 12,000 workers and cut back on its business.
Rescue work at the Pentagon was just as grim. Officials reported finding many bodies, but would not say how many.
``We are now getting into the heart of the crash site,'' said Edward P. Plaugher, the Arlington, Va., fire chief.
Eighty-five pieces of human remains have been recovered from the Pentagon, the Defense Department said. The agency said 188 people -- a combination of military and civilian employees at the department and the passengers and crew in the plane -- were believed killed.
A damaged voice recorder and the charred flight data recorder from the hijacked jet that struck the Pentagon have been sent to the FBI. Officials were hopeful the two devices would provide clues about the plane's final moments.
Meanwhile, the extraordinary federal investigation into how the hijackers carried off their attacks and who paid for them continued in hundreds of different directions, as agents followed up on thousands of leads.
Intelligence and law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times Saturday that the FBI had been searching for several weeks for two of the men suspected of taking part in the hijacking of the airliner that struck the Pentagon.
The men were wanted for questioning in the investigation of the terrorist bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. Seventeen American sailors died in the October 2000 bombing. U.S. officials have long suspected bin Laden of playing a key role in planning the attack, which he lauded publicly.
One of the men sought for questioning, Khalid al-Midhar, appears in a secret videotape made last year at a meeting in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, with a prime suspect in the Cole bombing. In late August, the CIA asked the FBI to find al-Midhar and an associate, Nawaq Alhamzi. Al-Midhar and Alhamzi both are believed to have been aboard the American Airlines Boeing 757 that crashed into the Pentagon Tuesday morning.
Officials said this constitutes a clear link between bin Laden and the hijack bombings in New York and at the Pentagon.
The two had been put on a U.S. immigration watch list, but apparently had entered the country already. Despite what the FBI called an ``aggressive'' effort, the bureau failed to find the two men until their names surfaced on the passenger manifest of hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, which rammed the Pentagon.
The investigation into the hijack attacks broadened Saturday as the FBI sent a list of more than 100 names to 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country, immigration officials questioned scores of people, and foreign investigators continued following up leads.
Investigators in Europe and the United States are examining whether bin Laden financed Tuesday's terror assault by stock trades on European exchanges in the days before the attacks, NBC News reported.
European officials have asked U.S. authorities to check whether associates of the fabulously wealthy bin Laden may have ``sold short'' stock in at least one company holding highly risky reinsurance on the World Trade Center.
In ``short-selling,'' an investor in effect bets that a company's stock price will drop significantly -- and he can make huge profits if he knows in advance of a calamity that might depress a reinsurance company's stock price, for example.
In a ``short sale,'' the investor borrows stock from a broker, sells it at its existing price, and then -- after the price drops -- uses some of the cash to repurchase the stock at the lower price and returns it to the broker. The more the price drops, the more cash he pockets.
In another investigative development Saturday, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a second arrest warrant for a material witness in the attacks. The Justice Department said it has detained 25 people for questioning on immigration violations.
A Justice Department official said the latest suspect, who he refused to identify, was not in custody, but that more arrests were imminent.
On Friday, authorities formally arrested a man they were holding on suspicion of displaying a false pilot's license at New York's JFK Airport.
Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said none of the 25 detainees had been charged with a crime and that several were cooperating. Department sources said two of the 25 were stopped at an Amtrak station in Fort Worth, Texas, with $5,000 in cash and a box cutter, the same kind of knife used by the 19 hijackers who crashed the four planes Tuesday.
As the investigation gathered strength Saturday, The Washington Post reported that unusual leads began to surface, among them the possibility that some of the hijackers may have received training at Pensacola Naval Air Station in Florida or at other U.S. military facilities. However, the Boston Globe quoted Saudi officials Saturday as saying the hijackers stole identities from legitimate Saudi military personnel who may have trained in the U.S.
Two of the 19 suspects named by the FBI, Saeed Alghamdi and Ahmed Alghamdi, have the same names as men listed at a housing facility for foreign military trainees at Pensacola. Two others, Hamza Alghamdi and Ahmed Alnami, have names similar to individuals listed in public records as using the same address inside the base.
In addition, a man named Saeed Alghamdi graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, while men with the same names as two other hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari, appear as graduates of the U.S. International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., and the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, respectively.
``Some of the FBI suspects had names similar to those used by foreign alumni of U.S. military courses,'' the Air Force acknowledged in a statement.
``However, discrepancies in their biographical data, such as birth dates 20 years off, indicate we are probably not talking about the same people.''
As the U.S. continued working to build diverse coalition support for a terror counterstrike, the State Department took the unusual step of summoning foreign diplomatic representatives to warn that their governments will be isolated if they tolerate or assist terrorist groups, a senior official told the Associated Press Saturday.
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