Interrogation of prisoners prevented more attacks, FBI director says

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Posted 10:22AM on Wednesday, January 23, 2002

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Interrogating members of Osama bin Laden's terror network detained at the U.S. military base in Kandahar has prevented new attacks against U.S. targets worldwide, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday. Mueller made an unannounced visit to the base, the largest concentration of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. As many as 400 al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners have been held at the base since the Taliban regime collapsed under attack by U.S.-led forces in November. "Information we have picked up since the war has prevented additional attacks around the world," Mueller said. "Interrogations from al-Qaida members detained here in Afghanistan as well as documents ... has prevented additional attacks against U.S. facilities around the world." Mueller ate a lunch of Afghan chicken and rice with FBI agents who are here to interrogate detainees. They are the first agents deployed in a combat zone. Mueller refused to give details on what attacks may have been prevented. But Singapore authorities last month arrested suspects they said were plotting attacks against the U.S. Embassy and other targets, based partly on intelligence picked up from Afghanistan. The FBI director said that he was traveling to find out "what more needs to be done to assist FBI agents who have participated with Army and other forces here to learn all we could and can about terrorist activities." Mueller said he could not say anything about the military's continuing hunt for bin Laden or his chief Afghan ally, deposed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. U.S. special forces and Afghan anti-Taliban fighters conducted house-to-house searches in four villages in southern Helmand province seeking Omar, the one-eyed cleric whose extreme Islamic regime allowed bin Laden to use the country as a base, Afghan sources said. Neither Omar nor his aides were discovered, the sources said on condition of anonymity. U.S. officials refuse to confirm special forces operations. In Germany, where three suicide hijackers lived undetected before staging the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, an intelligence official said that al-Qaida had suffered a major blow from the military campaign and may not be able to stage major new operations. Al-Qaida may still be able to carry out small attacks or activate long-established plans, said Dieter Kaundinya, head of the anti-terrorism unit at Germany's foreign intelligence service. But its resources are too stretched to support big new actions, he told the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. Meanwhile, a young American who fought with the Taliban, John Walker Lindh, was being flown to the United States. Lindh traveled about 450 miles from the USS Bataan in the northern Arabian Sea, where he had been held for two months, to Kandahar and was transferred to a C-17 military transport. His precise destination in the United States was unknown. He faces charges in U.S. federal court in northern Virginia for conspiring to kill Americans, providing support to terrorist organizations and engaging in prohibited transactions with the Taliban. He could be sentenced to life imprisonment if convicted. Reporters were kept away from the C-17 at Kandahar. The transfer took place under the red low-visibility light of the plane's back ramp, in a steady, cold rain, on the otherwise darkened runway. Lindh could not be seen. Lindh, a 20-year-old Californian who converted to Islam at age 16, allegedly trained at an al-Qaida camp in Afghanistan and personally met bin Laden. Lindh was captured in November in the siege of Kunduz and survived a bloody prison uprising by Taliban and al-Qaida members near Mazar-e-Sharif in which CIA operative Johnny "Mike" Spann was killed. There has been no indication he was directly involved in Spann's death. Other prisoners are being held in Kandahar pending their transfer to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Lindh, however, is being sent to the United States for trial because he is an American citizen. In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld insisted that the United States was treating the prisoners at Guantanamo humanely and in accordance with international rules. Critics, including European Union officials and human rights groups, said the American refusal to recognize detainees as prisoners of war leaves them no guaranteed rights and could lower international support.