Al Qaeda Suspect May Have Created Surveillance Files (in 2001)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-terror6_aug06,1,4083134.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

THE NATION
Al Qaeda Suspect May Have Created Surveillance Files
Man held in Britain is believed to have written reports that led to the heightened U.S. alert.

By Greg Miller, Josh Meyer and Mubashir Zaidi, Special to The Times


WASHINGTON — A key Al Qaeda suspect arrested in Britain is suspected of having written some of the surveillance reports that prompted govern- ment officials to raise the terrorist alert in the United States, counter-terrorism officials disclosed Thursday.

The suspect, known by the names Abu Eisa al Hindi and Abu Musa al Hindi, is believed to have carried out the surveillance of U.S. financial institutions before the Sept. 11 attacks, then written detailed assessments of the targets that were circulated to other Al Qaeda members, the officials said.

Those target assessments were among the materials recovered in a raid in Pakistan last month that led to the capture of an Al Qaeda computer expert. The files included detailed information on the vulnerabilities of major U.S. financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington. Among the targets were the Citigroup Center in New York and the International Monetary Fund and World Bank headquarters in the nation's capital.

It was the detailed data on these files, "when married up with multiple streams of intelligence" suggesting that Al Qaeda was eager to strike in the United States before the November election, that prompted the U.S. government to raise the terrorism alert Sunday, a senior Bush administration official said. <snip>