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CNN Live At Daybreak

Filipino Investigators Say 9/11 Plot May Date From 1995

Aired February 25, 2002 - 06:31   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.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: A plot by Islamic militants to hijack planes and crash them into buildings in the United States goes back as far as 1995. That word from investigators in the Philippines who say the terrorist attacks could have been avoided.

CNN's Maria Ressa has our story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARIA RESSA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Asian intelligence sources say this man may have helped plan September 11. He is Riduan Isomuddin, an Indonesian cleric also known as Hambali. Authorities in Malaysia and Singapore say they suspect he is al Qaeda's main operator in the region.

In January 2000, Hambali was videotaped meeting with two of the September 11 hijackers in Malaysia. Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi, this according to intelligence sources. They say Zacarias Moussaoui now facing terrorism related charges in the U.S. met with Hambali's aide later that year.

Philippine investigators remember Hambali as the director of Konsojaya, a Malaysian company which funded a terrorist cell broken up here in 1995 and those investigators say if the U.S. had followed up on what was learned from a seized computer then, September 11 might have been averted.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): They should have prevented it because the plan then and what is going to happen in the future is there in the disks.

RESSA: The computer belonged to Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. He wanted to bring the buildings down, but failed. According to classified documents obtained by CNN, he didn't stop trying.

When he was arrested in 1995 he was working on plans to attack the Twin Towers again, along with a host of other buildings. Yousef's partner, Abdul Hakim Murad, was trained as a commercial pilot. Under interrogation he said he was one of the first pilots recruited for what was supposed to be a suicide mission.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But they start how they combine it (ph) to me the proposal of Mr. Yousef to use or hijack commercial planes and divert into the Langley, Virginia structure, the CIA headquarters, and the Pentagon.

RESSA: But a fire in the terror group's safe house apartment in 1995 led to the arrest of Murad and forced Yousef to flee to Pakistan where he was arrested. Evidence found here would later convicted Murad and Yousef in the U.S.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There were five cells, but the four cells had already been decimated before September 11 and there's just this one cell, which I guess is being run by this person Hambali.

RESSA: Philippine police now believe Hambali may have been behind a series of bombings in Manila and Jakarta in 2000.

(on camera): Philippine intelligence officials say the 1995 attack plans were clearly documented and handed over to their American counterparts. A senior U.S. official acknowledges the U.S. did get that information, but that same official points out that the U.S. government gets literally dozens of tips on terror plots and ideas every week. Filipino officials here say they believe that if all agencies were working together then as they are now, September 11 might have been prevented.

Maria Ressa, CNN, Manila.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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