By Eric Lichtblau, The New York Times
WASHINGTON - Federal law enforcement officials said today that they had uncovered a plot by operatives of al Qaeda, using an Ohio truck driver as a scout, to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and other targets as recently as March.
The truck driver, Iyman Faris, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen from Kashmir living in Columbus, Ohio, was secretly arrested about three months ago. Mr. Faris agreed to plead guilty in May in closed proceedings before a federal judge in Virginia to charges that he had provided material support to terrorists, officials said today. He now faces 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors said Mr. Faris traveled in Afghanistan and Pakistan beginning in 2000, meeting with Osama bin Laden and working with one of his top lieutenants, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, to help organize and finance jihad causes. After returning to the United States in late 2002, officials said, he began casing the Brooklyn Bridge and discussing via coded messages with Qaeda leaders ways of using blowtorches to sever the suspension cables.
The plotting continued through March, as Mr. Faris sent coded messages to Qaeda operatives in Pakistan. One such message said that “the weather is too hot.” Officials said that meant that Mr. Faris feared that the plot was unlikely to succeed - apparently because of security and the bridge’s structure - and should be postponed. He was arrested soon after, although officials would not discuss the circumstances of his capture.
In a news conference here today, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that the authorities took Mr. Faris’s plot very seriously and that the case “highlights the very real threats that still exist here at home in the United States of America in the war against terrorism.”
The New York City Police Department, which was told of the plot in March, said it considered the threat so serious that it had increased land and marine patrols around the Brooklyn Bridge several months ago. “He is the principal reason why we have the kind of security you see on the Brooklyn Bridge,” a law enforcement official said of Mr. Faris.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said: “We spend a great deal of effort and money in keeping this city secure. In this case, it appears that money was well spent. It may have saved the Brooklyn Bridge.”
An F.B.I. official said investigators were still seeking to determine just how far the plot proceeded and how serious a threat Mr. Faris posed.
“Obviously he had contacts with people at Al Qaeda so he has to be considered somewhat important, but to say whether he really could have accomplished this or not, we’re still not sure,” the official said.
Justice Department officials decided to announce the case at a time when Mr. Ashcroft has been put on the defensive by charges from his own inspector general this month that the department mistreated many illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in its aggressive pursuit of terrorist suspects.
The Faris case allowed Mr. Ashcroft to claim another high-profile victory in the campaign against terrorism, and he compared it to other significant prosecutions against terrorist supporters in Detroit, Lackawanna, N.Y., and elsewhere. Although he declined to discuss details, he said the timing in making the case public was driven solely by law enforcement concerns.
“I firmly believe that for us to have announced this case a day sooner would have carried with it the potential of impairing very important interests,” Mr. Ashcroft told reporters today.
Mr. Faris was arrested soon after sending the message overseas about the bridge being “too hot” to attack, but the authorities refused to say how or where he was apprehended or what led them to him. Details cited in court documents indicated that the F.B.I. might have used electronic surveillance or intelligence sources to track his activities, but Mr. Ashcroft and other officials refused to discuss the surveillance because they said it could compromise national security.
J. Frederick Sinclair, a lawyer representing Mr. Faris, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The allegations against Mr. Faris bear similarities to the case against Jose Padilla, a Chicago man who last year was accused of plotting with al Qaeda to plant a “dirty bomb” and who has been imprisoned in a military brig as an enemy combatant.
Prosecutors discussed the idea of declaring Mr. Faris an enemy combatant as well, and that may have influenced his decision to admit guilt to avoid the prospect of indefinite detention, according to a lawyer who demanded anonymity.
Mr. Faris has indicated that he might be willing to cooperate with authorities, a law enforcement official said.
Mr. Faris, also known as Mohammad Rauf, came to the United States in 1994, officials said. He lived on a clean, tree-lined street in a racially mixed neighborhood in Columbus in the late 1990’s, until he and his wife apparently separated in early 2000, neighbors said today.
Negla Ross, a former next-door neighbor said, “He was very standoffish, not approachable.”
Ms. Ross said she called the police about him a few times because of loud music and other noise. Once, after neighbors heard shots fired from his home, the police found that his wife’s son had set up a shooting range in the basement, she said.
Mr. Ashcroft said that the truck driver’s suburban life was a cover.
“On any given day, Iyman Faris appeared to be a hard-working, independent truck driver,” Mr. Ashcroft said.
Working out of Columbus “he freely crisscrossed the country making deliveries to airports and businesses without raising a suspicion,” the attorney general said. “But Faris led a secret double life,” Mr. Ashcroft said. “He traveled to Pakistan and to Afghanistan, covertly met with Osama bin Laden, joined al Qaeda’s jihad against America.”
Mr. Faris appeared to have several connections to al Qaeda. He was a “distant relative” of a former Baltimore resident, Majid Khan, who is a suspected al Qaeda operative and was captured in Pakistan recently, law enforcement officials said. He also maintained a “friendly relationship” with an unidentified Qaeda leader he knew since the 1980’s through connections to Afghanistan, they added.
In late 2000, Mr. Faris traveled with his Qaeda friend from Pakistan to Afghanistan, prosecutors said. There, officials said, he met Mr. bin Laden at a Qaeda training camp and he also began helping the group with logistical planning for their operations, prosecutors said.
A student of aviation, he went to an Internet cafe in Karachi, Pakistan, and researched information for al Qaeda about ultralight planes and their use as “escape planes,” prosecutors said in court pleadings.
He also accompanied his friend to a factory in late 2000 or early 2001 to order 2,000 lightweight sleeping bags to be shipped to Afghanistan for use by Al Qaeda, officials said. And he dressed in disguise to get airline tickets allowing al Qaeda operatives to travel to Yemen, officials said.
In early 2002, the authorities said, he met Mr. Mohammed, who is regarded as a mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials said Mr. Faris was to deliver money and cellphones to Mr. Mohammed.
Mr. Mohammed, identified in court papers only by the code name C-2, told Mr. Faris “that Al Qaeda was planning two simultaneous operations in New York City and Washington D.C,” according to the court documents. One plan was to use “gas cutters” - blowtorches referred to by the code name gas stations - to sever the suspension cables of a bridge. Mr. Faris was also told that al Qaeda was planning to “derail trains,” officials said.
He returned to the United States about 14 months ago, prosecutors said, and began researching gas cutters and the Brooklyn Bridge. He spoke with an acquaintance about acquiring the gas cutters and he also sent several coded messages to contacts in Pakistan from April 2002 to March 2003 to update them on the status of the project.
In late 2002, prosecutors said, Mr. Faris traveled to New York City and examined the bridge. But “he concluded that the plot to destroy the bridge by severing the cables was very unlikely to succeed because of the bridge’s security and structure,” prosecutors said.
But a senior law enforcement official said the design of the bridge could make it vulnerable. “If you had the time and you were out of sight, you could do it,” he said.