Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in
Trade Center Blast
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: October 28, 1993
Correction
Appended
Law-enforcement officials were told
that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the
World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly
substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the
blast.
The informer was to have helped the
plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off
by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad A.
Salem, should be used, the informer said.
The account, which is given in the
transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings Mr. Salem secretly made of
his talks with law-enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as in a far
better position than previously known to foil the Feb. 26 bombing of New York
City's tallest towers. The explosion left six people dead, more than 1,000
injured and damages in excess of half a billion dollars. Four men are now on
trial in Manhattan Federal Court in that attack.
Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former
Egyptian army officer, was used by the Government to penetrate a circle of
Muslim extremists now charged in two bombing cases: the World Trade Center
attack and a foiled plot to destroy the United Nations, the Hudson River
tunnels and other New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the
second bombing case, but his work for the Government was erratic, and for
months before the trade center blast, he was feuding with the F.B.I. Supervisor
'Messed It Up'
After the bombing, he resumed his
undercover work. In an undated transcript of a conversation from that period,
Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent about an unnamed
F.B.I. supervisor who, he said, "came and messed it up."
"He requested to meet me in the
hotel," Mr. Salem says of the supervisor. "He requested to make me to
testify and if he didn't push for that, we'll be going building the bomb with a
phony powder and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But since you, we
didn't do that."
The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as
saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. headquarters in Washington about
the bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent
identified as John Anticev.
"He said, I don't think that the
New York people would like the things out of the New York office to go to
Washington, D.C.," Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him.
Another agent, identified as Nancy
Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to agree with
it, saying of the New York people: "Well, of course not, because they
don't want to get their butts chewed."
Mary Jo White, who, as the United
States Attorney for the Southern District of New York is prosecuting defendants
in two related bombing cases, declined yesterday to comment on the Salem
allegations or any other aspect of the cases. An investigator close to the case
who refused to be identified further said, "We wish he would have saved
the world," but called Mr. Salem's claims "figments of his
imagination."
The transcripts, which are stamped
"draft" and compiled from 70 tapes recorded secretly during the last
two years by Mr. Salem, were turned over to defense lawyers in the second
bombing case by the Government on Tuesday under a judge's order barring lawyers
from disseminating them. A large portion of the material was made available to
The New York Times.
In a letter to Federal Judge Michael B.
Mukasey, Andrew C. McCarthy, an assistant United States attorney, said that he
had learned of the tapes while debriefing Mr. Salem and that the informer had
then voluntarily turned them over. Other Salem tapes and transcripts were being
withheld pending Government review, of "security and other issues,"
Mr. McCarthy said.
William M. Kunstler, a defense lawyer
in the case, accused the Government this week of improper delay in handing over
all the material. The transcripts he had seen, he said, "were filled with
all sorts of Government misconduct." But citing the judge's order, he said
he could not provide any details.
The transcripts do not make clear the
extent to which Federal authorities knew that there was a plan to bomb the
World Trade Center, merely that they knew that a bombing of some sort was being
discussed. But Mr. Salem's evident anguish at not being able to thwart the
trade center blast is a recurrent theme in the transcripts. In one of the first
numbered tapes, Mr. Salem is quoted as telling agent Floyd: "Since the
bomb went off I feel terrible. I feel bad. I feel here is people who don't
listen."
Ms. Floyd seems to commiserate, saying,
"hey, I mean it wasn't like you didn't try and I didn't try."
In an apparent reference to Mr. Salem's
complaints about the supervisor, Agent Floyd adds, "You can't force people
to do the right thing."
The investigator involved in the case
who would not be quoted by name said that Mr. Salem may have been led to
believe by the agents that they were blameless for any mistakes. It was a
classic agent's tactic, he said, to "blame the boss for all that's bad and
take credit for all the good things."
- 1
- 2
Correction: October 29, 1993, Friday An article
yesterday about accounts of a plot to build a bomb that was eventually exploded
at the World Trade Center referred imprecisely in some copies to what Federal
officials knew about the plan before the blast. Transcripts of tapes made
secretly by an informant, Emad A. Salem, quote him as saying he warned the
Government that a bomb was being built. But the transcripts do not make clear
the extent to which the Federal authorities knew that the target was the World
Trade Center.
Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in
Trade Center Blast
Correction
Appended
(Page 2 of 2)
In another point in the transcripts,
Mr. Salem recounts a conversation he said he had with Mr. Anticev, saying,
"I said, 'Guys, now you saw this bomb went off and you both know that we
could avoid that.' " At another point, Mr. Salem says, "You get paid,
guys, to prevent problems like this from happening."
Mr. Salem talks of the plan to
substitute harmless powder for explosives during another conversation with
agent Floyd. In that conversation, he recalls a previous discussion with Mr.
Anticev.
"Do you deny," Mr. Salem says
he told the other agent, "your supervisor is the main reason of bombing
the World Trade Center?" Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev did not deny it.
"We was handling the case perfectly well until the supervisor came and
messed it up, upside down."
The transcripts reflect an effort to
keep Mr. Salem as an intelligence asset who would not have to go public or
testify.
A police detective working with the
F.B.I., Louis Napoli, assures Mr. Salem in one conversation, "We can give
you total immunity towards prosecution, towards, ah, ah, testifying." But
he adds: "I still have to tell you that if you're the only game in town in
regards to the information," then, he says, "you'll have to
testify." Studied for Signs of Illegality
The transcripts are being closely
studied by lawyers looking for signs that Mr. Salem and the law enforcement
officials, in their zeal to gather evidence, may have crossed the legal line
into entrapment, a charge that defense counsel have already raised.
But the transcripts show that the
officials were concerned that by associating with bombing defendants awaiting
trial in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Mr. Salem might have been
accused of spying on the defense.
In an undated conversation, Mr. Anticev
tries to explain the perils.
"We're not allowed to have any
information regarding that," he tells Mr. Salem. "That could
jeopardize, you know, if you go see a lawyer, ah, you know, with the
defendant's friend or whatever like that, and you're talking about things we're
not suppose to, ah, condone that. We're not supposed to make people do that for
us. That's like sacred ground. You can't be privileged, ah, you can't know
what's being talked about at all."
Mr. Salem seems to bridle. "I, I,
I don't think that's right," he says.
The agent insists: "Yeah, but
that's just a guideline. If that ever happened, ah, you can back and reported
on the meeting between, ah, you know, Kunstler and Mohammad A. Elgabrown.
Forget about it. I mean a lot of people ah the case can get thrown out. You understand?"
The references were to the defense lawyer, Mr. Kunstler, and his client in the
second bomb case, Ibrahim A. Elgabrowny.
Mr. Salem seems to reluctantly agree.
"They want you to have a hand in
it," Mr. Anticev goes on, "but they're afraid that when you get that
kind of, ah, too deep, like me, it's almost like, especially with all this
legal stuff going on right now."
If it were just intelligence gathering,
the agent says, "You can do anything you want. You could go crazy over
there and have a good time. Do you know what I mean?"
The agent goes on: "But now that
everything is going to court and there is legal stuff and it's just, it's just
too hard. It's just too tricky, if, this, you know. And then there's the fact
if you come by with the big information, he did this, ah, let me talk about
this with the other people again."
"O.K.," Mr. Salem says.
"All right. O.K."
- 1
- 2
Correction: October 29, 1993, Friday An article
yesterday about accounts of a plot to build a bomb that was eventually exploded
at the World Trade Center referred imprecisely in some copies to what Federal
officials knew about the plan before the blast. Transcripts of tapes made
secretly by an informant, Emad A. Salem, quote him as saying he warned the
Government that a bomb was being built. But the transcripts do not make clear
the extent to which the Federal authorities knew that the target was the World
Trade Center.
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