Investigators Key In on Bank Account that Financed Bulk of Attacks

Investigators Key In on Bank Account that Financed Bulk of Attacks

by Mark Fazlollah
Knight Ridder Newspapers
October 9, 2001

WASHINGTON--Investigators say they have closed the circle on a key part of the financing for last month's terrorist attacks, identifying a single Arab bank account that supplied $ 100,000 to the suspected hijackers a year before the attacks and received $ 15,000 back from the hijackers just before Sept. 11.

A top operative in Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, Mustafah Muhammad Ahmad, controlled the account, said an official involved in the FBI investigation who asked not to be identifed. Suspected hijacking leader Mohamed Atta received the $ 100,000 in front money, the officials said.

The money came from an account in the United Arab Emirates capital of Dubai. Ahmad, also known as Shaykh Saiid, is one of al Qaeda's chief financial players in the Middle East. In tracking the money, investigators have linked the Dubai account to $ 100,000 sent to Atta at least a year before the attacks, the U.S. official said. Dennis M. Lormel, director of the FBI's financial crimes unit, referred to the $ 100,000 in testimony before a congressional committee last week but made no reference to the two-way transactions.

Investigators found paperwork discarded by Atta, detailing how money was to be returned to Ahmed, the official said. He said the paperwork helped investigators quickly link Ahmed to money initially transferred to Atta from Dubai and the money that Atta returned to the UAE.

"They weren't the brightest candles," the official said. "They really got sloppy. They left a lot of leads."

Investigators also have found that some of the suspected hijackers carried large amounts of cash into the United States when they arrived. One had about $ 35,000 when he arrived and declared it on a customs form, but the money was not seized because it is not unusual for wealthy Middle Eastern men to travel with large amounts of cash, the official said.

It was previously disclosed that Atta and two other suspected hijackers returned $ 15,000 to an account in the United Arab Emirates, two to three three days before the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the identity of the person controlling the account was not revealed at the time.

Officials in the UAE have said that a man left for Pakistan on Sept. 11 with the $ 15,000.

The Bush administration has said the money trail is a crucial link in uncovering the support network for the 19 suspected hijackers, and destroying that network. To that end, about 140 financial crime specialists from an array of federal agencies have been shoehorned into an office at FBI headquarters.

Each day, new leads pour in to the team, known as the Financial Working Group. The U.S. Treasury Department downloads thousands of bank account records into the group's computer network.

The accounts are divided between 70 analysts, who sit at four computer banks on one side of the office. On the other side, agents work the phones. A handwritten sign that one agent pasted on a wall calls for "Perseverance and dedication to the 6,000 lives lost."

At 5 p.m. each day, an agent hand-carries a CD-Rom with the day's work to the Treasury Department financial investigation unit in suburban Washington, where other agents sort through the data.

The sharing of information by the FBI reflects an unusual level of inner-agency co-operation, the official said.

"The FBI let their stuff out of the building," the official said. "That would have been impossible before."

Greg Passic, former chief of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's money-laundering section, is working on the investigation and said he initially was apprehensive because agencies have had conflicts on past cases. But he said his fears were quickly dispelled.

"It almost like the whole world's coming together," Passic said. "I was really concerned about it at first. I've been living these constant roadblocks. All of the sudden, I see it fixed overnight."

The Financial Working Group's job of identifying terrorist-linked bank accounts has been exceptionally difficult because many of the suspected hijackers have common Arabic names. Citibank, for example, has said more than 400 accounts were held by individuals with the name Mohamed Atta.

Investigators say the key to tracking the correct accounts is to ensure that they link old addresses, post office boxes or credit cards to more current addresses used by the suspected hijackers.

In addition to the FBI, agencies who have sent analysts include the Internal Revenue Service, the Customs Service, the Postal inspection service and the Secret Service. Sixty analysts from the National Drug Intelligence Center, based in Johnsontown, Pa., have been indefinitely detailed to the FBI headquarters.

Larry Johnson, former deputy director of the state department's office of counter-terrorism, said the financial investigative unit for the first time has been able to break through bureaucratic barriers that have previously hobbled U.S. efforts to stop terrorists.

The new unit, he said, is a breakthrough in overcoming those problems.

Michael Horn, director of the National Drug Intelligence Center, called the investigative group "a pretty amazing cooperative effort."

Fazlollah reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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