The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [168]
O’NEILL WAS PARTICULARLY CONCERNED THAT, as the millennium approached, al-Qaeda would seize the moment to dramatize its war with America. He was certain that Islamic terrorists had established a beachhead in America. This view was very much different from the one that the leadership of the bureau endorsed. Director Freeh repeatedly stressed in White House meetings that al-Qaeda posed no domestic threat. Bin Laden did not even make the FBI’s Most Wanted list until June 1999.
O’Neill had come to feel that there was a pace to the al-Qaeda attacks, and he told friends, “We’re due.” That feeling was very much on him in the second half of 1999. He knew how much timing and symbols meant to bin Laden, and the millennium presented an unparalleled opportunity for theatrical effect. O’Neill thought the target would be some essential piece of the infrastructure: the drinking water, the electrical grid, perhaps the transportation system. The intelligence to support that hypothesis was frustratingly absent, however.
In December, Jordanian authorities arrested sixteen suspected terrorists believed to be planning to blow up a Radisson Hotel in Amman and a number of tourist sites frequented by Westerners. One of the plotters was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, although he was not captured. The Jordanians also discovered a six-volume al-Qaeda training manual on CD-ROM. The Jordanian cell included several Arab Americans.
The CIA warned of multiple attacks inside the United States but provided few details. With the FAA, the Border Patrol, the National Guard, the Secret Service, and every sheriff’s office and police department in the country on high alert, there was still no actual sign of any forthcoming attack. The fears of a terrorist strike were wrapped up in the general Y2K hysteria—the widespread concern about the possible failure of most computers to accommodate the millennial change in the calendar, leading to a collapse of the technological world.
Then on December 14, a border guard in Port Angeles, Washington, stopped an Algerian man, Ahmed Ressam, whose obvious anxiety aroused her suspicion. She asked him to step out of the car. Another guard opened his trunk and said, “Hey, we’ve got something here.” A customs officer grabbed the back of Ressam’s coat and guided him to the trunk of the car. Inside were four timers, more than a hundred pounds of urea, and fourteen pounds of sulfate—the makings of an Oklahoma City–type bomb.
Ressam bolted, leaving his coat in the hands of the customs officer. The guards gave chase and caught him four blocks away trying to break into a car stopped at a traffic light.
It developed that Ressam’s target was Los Angeles International Airport. For all the precautions that had been taken, if that one border guard had not been sufficiently curious about Ressam’s nervousness, the millennium might have gotten started with a major catastrophe. But luck chose a different venue.
Ressam was not really an al-Qaeda operative, although he had learned to build bombs in one of bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan. He was a freelance terrorist sailing under al-Qaeda colors, the sort that would proliferate after 9/11. A thief with little religious training, he could be called a harbinger. Trained and empowered by al-Qaeda, he formed his own ad hoc cell in Montreal. He had called Afghanistan before the attack to inquire if bin Laden would like to take credit for the act, but he never heard back.
John O’Neill was certain that Ressam had confederates in the United States. Who were they? Where were they? He felt that there was a ticking clock,