Another Lost Opportunity
A convicted terrorist was providing U.S. officials
With very specific information about a terrorist attack
Three months before 9/11.


WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
Newsweek
Updated: 6:03 p.m. ET April 28, 2005

April 27 - In the spring of 2001, one of the U.S. government’s most valuable terror informants gave the FBI a far more alarming account of Al Qaeda plans to attack inside the United States than has ever been publicly disclosed, according to newly available court documents.

Algerian expatriate Ahmed Ressam, whose sentencing for a Millennium-eve plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport was unexpectedly postponed today, told bureau interrogators nearly four years ago that Al Qaeda commander Abu Zubaydah had been discussing plans to smuggle terrorist operatives and explosives into the country for the purpose of launching a strike on U.S. soil, the documents show.

The fresh documents, released in federal court in Seattle in recent days, shed new light on an issue that dominated last year’s hearings by the September 11 commission: precisely how much did the U.S. government know about Al Qaeda plans to strike inside the country in the summer of 2001 when the attacks on the World Trade Towers and Pentagon were in their final stages?

Ressam was scheduled to be sentenced today for his December 1999 attempt to smuggle a rental car filled with explosives across the Canadian border. He planned to use them to blow up Los Angeles airport on the eve of the New Year’s Eve 2000 celebrations. But after a dramatic hearing, in which prosecutors accused Ressam of ceasing his cooperation with the FBI two years ago and jeopardizing their cases against two terror defendants he had previously identified, U.S. Judge John Coughenour delayed the sentencing hearing so that Ressam could reconsider his stand. “I hope it’s not lost on Mr. Ressam, we need to see something happen in the next few months,” said Judge Coughenour.

Until his apparent change of heart, Ressam had been considered one of the U.S. government’s prized catches in the fight against terrorism, a hardened terrorist operative who had access to the highest levels of Al Qaeda but chose to cooperate with the FBI in the spring of 2001 when confronted with the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.

Ressam’s information helped authorities break up violent jihadi networks on two continents and jail suspected members of Canadian- and U.S.-based cells. Even John McKay, the U.S. attorney in Seattle who has complained about Ressam’s recent falling out with the government, confirmed that the original information he provided was an important boon to prosecutors, particularly about Al Qaeda tradecraft. “He did give us very good information,” McKay said.

Perhaps no better sign of that was the inclusion of some of Resssam’s information in the now famous presidential daily briefing (PDB)—entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.”—that was presented to President Bush by the CIA on Aug. 6, 2001.

The fact that Ressam’s information was the basis for at least part of the PDB to Bush first became known last year when the 9/11 commission hearings forced the White House to make the long-disputed document public. But it turns out, according to the new court documents, the information from Ressam that was contained in the PDB was watered down and seemed far more bland than what the Algerian terrorist was actually telling the FBI.

CONTINUED: Ressam Talked About His Experiences in Al Qaeda Training Camps in Afghanistan
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