taken from Ajaj indicated that the plot or plots were hatched at or near the
Khaldan camp, a terrorist training camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Ajaj had left Texas in April 1992 to go there to learn how to construct bombs.
He had met Ramzi Yousef in Pakistan, where they discussed bombing targets
in the United States and assembled a "terrorist kit" that included bomb-mak-
ing manuals, operations guidance, videotapes advocating terrorist action
against the United States, and false identification documents.
bombs on board a dozen trans-Pacific airliners and setting them off simultane-
ously. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--Yousef 's uncle, then located in Qatar--was
a fellow plotter of Yousef 's in the Manila air plot and had also wired him some
money prior to the Trade Center bombing. The U.S. Attorney obtained an
indictment against KSM in January 1996, but an official in the government of
Qatar probably warned him about it. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed evaded cap-
ture (and stayed at large to play a central part in the 9/11 attacks).
ent all the evidence of possible involvement of individuals other than those
charged, although they continued to pursue such investigations, planning or
hoping for later prosecutions.The process was meant, by its nature, to mark for
the public the events as finished--case solved, justice done. It was not designed
to ask if the events might be harbingers of worse to come. Nor did it allow for
aggregating and analyzing facts to see if they could provide clues to terrorist
tactics more generally--methods of entry and finance, and mode of operation
inside the United States.
threat.The government's attorneys stressed the seriousness of the crimes, and
put forward evidence of Yousef 's technical ingenuity.Yet the public image that
persisted was not of clever Yousef but of stupid Salameh going back again and
again to reclaim his $400 truck rental deposit.
festations of a new type of terrorism. Our overview of U.S. capabilities for deal-
ing with it thus begins with the nation's vast complex of law enforcement
agencies.