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CNN Live At Daybreak

America's New War: A Look at FBI's Investigation

Aired September 24, 2001 - 08:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Thousands of FBI agents taking part in what attorney general calls the largest criminal investigation in U.S. history. How far have they gotten in 13 days? A look at the FBI's investigation is in this week's "Time" magazine.

And we're joined now by Tim Padgett, the Miami bureau chief for "Time."

Tim, let's starting with this question, a report there on Mohammed Atta, one of the suspected hijackers, the State Department promising to put out a white paper, if you will, soon connecting the dots back to Osama bin Laden. How successful have investigators been so far, based on your reporting?

TIM PADGETT, "TIME": They haven't really gotten to what we would call the layer above the hijackers; that meaning, operatives who may have been facilitating, aiding with finance, et cetera, hijack leaders like Mohammed Atta here in Florida and elsewhere. We do know that they have arrested, for example, operatives in Chicago and Texas and elsewhere, but those operatives may be on same operational level as hijackers like Mohammed Atta.

What they are really striving for right now is to get to that layer of Osama bin Laden operatives above the hijackers themselves, and where that is taking them, we think, is a very intense search through the money trail, and that is often leading them to what we are sort of calling right now, "unwitting operatives," people who are Arab or otherwise who may have unwittingly helped hijackers like Mohammed Atta via means like wiring money to and from places like Egypt. Mohammed Atta, of course, being Egyptian, he's very much thought to have been coming out of al Qaeda partner organizations like the Egyptian Jihad.

We know that Mohammed Atta, for example, had been wiring money, had been receiving wired money from operatives in the Egyptian Jihad. And they are looking at, for example, just simple storefront cash checking and money wiring services in places like Florida that may have willing or unwittingly helped people like Mohammed Atta receive that kind of cash that they were using to develop this operation here in places like Florida and Maryland and New Jersey.

KING: And help us understand from your sources and others at "Time," in this investigation obviously they are trying to piece together what happened September 11. Based on what investigators learned so far, do they believe -- and we have had this reported by crop dusters obviously -- do they believe that other attacks were supposed to happen on September 11 or in days following?

PADGETT: I think certainly they believe that there were other shenanigans in the works; crop dusting, for example, may have just been one of them, although, our sources in Washington, I'm being told, are not quite ready to corroborate this idea that crop dusters are going to be used to spray chemicals and nerve gases and other sorts of biological weapons, et cetera. That may have been just one of the areas that hijackers like Mohammed Atta were looking at and that they probably discarded long before they figuring that 767s were a much more effective way of terrorizing, you know, an entire nation like the United States.

KING: And quickly, the president talks of a lengthy military and diplomatic campaign. What's the sense of the investigation? Any sense that there will be a grand jury looking to return indictments soon, or is that months if not years down the road?

PADGETT: I think that is months down the road, but they are definitely going to want to be returning indictments because they need to get these operatives to lead them to people, as I said before, in that upper layer. And though that upper layer may not even really be existing to great extent in United States, that may be leading them to place like Hamburg, Germany, Cairo, Egypt, Lebanon, et cetera. That may be where this upper layer of operatives may be found more than in United States itself.

KING: Tim Padgett, Miami bureau chief for "Time" magazine, thank you for thoughts this morning.

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