Bin Laden Aide Made ‘Godzilla’ Reference
by Greg Smith, Michele McPhee and Richard Sisk, Washington Post
NEW YORK - Abu Zubaida, the operations chief for Osama bin Laden, put New York on edge last week with a vague terrorist target idea he picked up from a Godzilla movie, intelligence sources said.
The captured Zubaida told his CIA and FBI interrogators in the course of marathon debriefings that al Qaeda terror cells had discussed the possibility of hitting “the statue in the water,” meaning the Statue of Liberty, in a new wave of attacks on the city, the sources said.
Zubaida, who speaks English, also mentioned “the bridge in that movie,” referring to the 1998 American remake of the Japanese Godzilla series in which the monster emerges at the Battery.
Puzzled interrogators had to view a tape of the movie to learn that the final scene involved Godzilla’s demise after becoming tangled in the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge.
“Out of an abundance of caution,” a source said, the FBI passed on Zubaida’s “unsubstantiated and uncorroborated information that terrorists are considering attacks against landmarks” to the city police.
In a swift response, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly stepped up harbor and air surveillance at both landmarks and posted an Emergency Service Unit truck on the bridge.
But the overall national threat level from the new Office of Homeland Security remained at yellow, for high alert -- the same as it has been since Sept. 11 -- and the city’s reaction renewed the debate over what and when the public should be told about vague terror warnings.
Intelligence sources said the FBI and CIA were in a difficult position in evaluating the worth of the information from Zubaida, whose inflated ego and contempt for his American interrogators have led him to talk at length.
“Look, the guy is talking, and, given who he is, we have to take seriously what he says, even if we can’t take it on face value,” said a senior government official familiar with the interrogations of Zubaida.
“Sure, he may be trying to mislead us, spread disinformation,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “But given how high up he was, you have to take what he says into consideration.”
Kelly went on record to back up the source’s statements. He said Zubaida, who was captured in a March 28 raid on a Pakistani safe house, could be playing mind games to spread panic in the United States, but he said Zubaida was also giving up valuable information that could not be disclosed.
“There are notions, concepts, ideas out there that we have to be aware of,” Kelly said, since there are “people who are in place [from al Qaeda] who have received instruction.”
“There are certain things that this detainee put forward, and it appears to be accurate,” he said. “We think this detainee has some credibility.”