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CNN Saturday Morning News
Man Who Triggered FBI Man Hunt Found
Aired January 04, 2003 - 08:16 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 VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: The man who triggered the FBI search for five men who may have entered the U.S. illegally on Christmas Eve will return to New York City. Michael John Hamandi will face a charge of possessing false documents. Sources say Hamandi's information led authorities to issue an alert for the five men.
Meantime, FBI officials have traveled to Pakistan to interview a jeweler who says he was mistakenly pictured in that alert.
With more, we're joined now by CNN security analyst Kelly McCann, who is in Washington.
Kelly, just very, very quickly, want to start by these five photos that the FBI put out. What were they hoping to achieve, knowing that these photos may not have in fact been the right people?
KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Well, in fact, I mean, if they were close -- if they were close enough, John, to be used for another person's false identity, then it probably could have been enough for an eyewitness to, you know, key on and alert someone that that person was in the area. So I think that's what they were trying to get at there.
VAUSE: Well, we got a problem now that the credibility of these alerts now is being seriously questioned. It's like when you put out too many terror alerts, people become numb to them. If you keep putting out these photos and they turn out not to be correct, do people then become numb to these photos?
MCCANN: No, and I think it's -- that's a bad leap, and here's why. I mean, the public right now is seeing more of investigative efforts than they've ever seen before. The lead development, and then all of the dead ends and the false roads that are routinely experienced by law enforcement organizations. It's just that the public is seeing that now.
In fact, you know, there's quite a bit going on around this case, as you know, and it had all the elements of potentially terrorists in route.
VAUSE: Just talk about the logistics here. How did the FBI come across these five photos to begin with?
MCCANN: Well, basically, Hamdani, who you mentioned at the start, was the center of an ongoing investigation. They seized these photos and some other related statistics, you know, dates of birth and names, in a basically a seizure at his residence. When that happened, they started to research it, and obviously then the -- when the picture came up, they put it out on the international wires.
And the Pakistani authorities did corroborate that in fact Askar (ph) had used a bogus passport in Abu Dabi that was a U.K. passport, and was deported back to Pakistan. So there was a direct link. And in fact, that's what started the whole ball tumbling.
VAUSE: Yes, we know these guys apparently, these five men, they're saying there's no link to terrorism, but they may have in fact been using these false documents. We heard the president talking about that earlier this week.
Let's talk about false or forged documents as far as identity cards. We've seen on the al Qaeda Web site basically ways of falsifying documentations. How, how, how important is false documents when it comes to the terrorists and how they operate?
MCCANN: Incredibly. In fact, in that manual, in that lesson, lesson three, it goes through very succinct measures that should be used. In fact, one, "All documents of the undercover brothers should be falsified." I mean, that states that, that all documents when you're traveling should be falsified, that a photo that's used should be taken without a beard, and in fact, now, Askar is growing his beard back. But he appears cleanshaven in the photo that was released.
"All falsification matters should not be carried out haphazardly." Well, Hamdani was a well-known forger and had been in business since 1996, in fact, had been charged and jumped bail in 1996 and has been routinely providing documentation to the illegal alien traffic, if you will.
And then lastly, that the brothers should not use the falsified passport in the country it is from. And that's an old tradecraft methodology. You wouldn't want to take a U.K. passport to the U.K. because it's subjected to a higher level of known scrutiny. They're more familiar with it.
In fact, he used that passport in Abu Dabi and could have used it to get into the United States. So it followed all the key discriminators that would have alerted people to think that this was in fact terrorist incident.
And by the way, remember that the FBI did never confirm that five men were in the country, just that this was part of an ongoing investigation.
VAUSE: Yes, just while we're talking about this, I just want to correct, I said the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) al Qaeda Web site, I actually meant the Department of Justice Web site.
So the Department of Justice actually puts this out on their Web site. That seems a little strange. Why would they do that?
MCCANN: Actually, I've reviewed an awful lot of that material that is not publicly available, and I asked the people that I work with why that was done. And some of them seemed to think that in fact what it does is, if people go to that Web site and read, you know, in open source, what was seized in a Manchester, U.K., raid, about the methodology and about just the detail that these men are willing to take to come into this country and to do horrible acts, it is astounding.
And I think that it basically bolsters the case here and doesn't detract from the credibility of the FBI, in fact, it supports it.
VAUSE: OK, when we talked about the photograph of a brother in these documents should be without a beard, how does that relate to when we saw those before-and-after photos of the Pakistani jeweler? I mean, that sort of fits in with that category perfectly, doesn't it?
MCCANN: It certainly does. And don't forget also, he was a jeweler, and what was the subject of recent investigations, kiosks here in the United States that sell silver jewelry and semiprecious stone jewelry because it's a cash-only business. And that was investigated to see if that money was being funneled back to Pakistan and then on to the al Qaeda.
So the photo now, it goes to the assumption that in the U.S. we would engage in racial profiling instead of behavioral profiling, and that's why it's stated as such.
VAUSE: OK, we got to leave it there, but thank you very much for those insights today. Very interesting story, one which we're going to follow.
MCCANN: You bet, John.
VAUSE: OK, Kelly.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired January 4, 2003 - 08:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: The man who triggered the FBI search for five men who may have entered the U.S. illegally on Christmas Eve will return to New York City. Michael John Hamandi will face a charge of possessing false documents. Sources say Hamandi's information led authorities to issue an alert for the five men.
Meantime, FBI officials have traveled to Pakistan to interview a jeweler who says he was mistakenly pictured in that alert.
With more, we're joined now by CNN security analyst Kelly McCann, who is in Washington.
Kelly, just very, very quickly, want to start by these five photos that the FBI put out. What were they hoping to achieve, knowing that these photos may not have in fact been the right people?
KELLY MCCANN, CNN SECURITY ANALYST: Well, in fact, I mean, if they were close -- if they were close enough, John, to be used for another person's false identity, then it probably could have been enough for an eyewitness to, you know, key on and alert someone that that person was in the area. So I think that's what they were trying to get at there.
VAUSE: Well, we got a problem now that the credibility of these alerts now is being seriously questioned. It's like when you put out too many terror alerts, people become numb to them. If you keep putting out these photos and they turn out not to be correct, do people then become numb to these photos?
MCCANN: No, and I think it's -- that's a bad leap, and here's why. I mean, the public right now is seeing more of investigative efforts than they've ever seen before. The lead development, and then all of the dead ends and the false roads that are routinely experienced by law enforcement organizations. It's just that the public is seeing that now.
In fact, you know, there's quite a bit going on around this case, as you know, and it had all the elements of potentially terrorists in route.
VAUSE: Just talk about the logistics here. How did the FBI come across these five photos to begin with?
MCCANN: Well, basically, Hamdani, who you mentioned at the start, was the center of an ongoing investigation. They seized these photos and some other related statistics, you know, dates of birth and names, in a basically a seizure at his residence. When that happened, they started to research it, and obviously then the -- when the picture came up, they put it out on the international wires.
And the Pakistani authorities did corroborate that in fact Askar (ph) had used a bogus passport in Abu Dabi that was a U.K. passport, and was deported back to Pakistan. So there was a direct link. And in fact, that's what started the whole ball tumbling.
VAUSE: Yes, we know these guys apparently, these five men, they're saying there's no link to terrorism, but they may have in fact been using these false documents. We heard the president talking about that earlier this week.
Let's talk about false or forged documents as far as identity cards. We've seen on the al Qaeda Web site basically ways of falsifying documentations. How, how, how important is false documents when it comes to the terrorists and how they operate?
MCCANN: Incredibly. In fact, in that manual, in that lesson, lesson three, it goes through very succinct measures that should be used. In fact, one, "All documents of the undercover brothers should be falsified." I mean, that states that, that all documents when you're traveling should be falsified, that a photo that's used should be taken without a beard, and in fact, now, Askar is growing his beard back. But he appears cleanshaven in the photo that was released.
"All falsification matters should not be carried out haphazardly." Well, Hamdani was a well-known forger and had been in business since 1996, in fact, had been charged and jumped bail in 1996 and has been routinely providing documentation to the illegal alien traffic, if you will.
And then lastly, that the brothers should not use the falsified passport in the country it is from. And that's an old tradecraft methodology. You wouldn't want to take a U.K. passport to the U.K. because it's subjected to a higher level of known scrutiny. They're more familiar with it.
In fact, he used that passport in Abu Dabi and could have used it to get into the United States. So it followed all the key discriminators that would have alerted people to think that this was in fact terrorist incident.
And by the way, remember that the FBI did never confirm that five men were in the country, just that this was part of an ongoing investigation.
VAUSE: Yes, just while we're talking about this, I just want to correct, I said the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) al Qaeda Web site, I actually meant the Department of Justice Web site.
So the Department of Justice actually puts this out on their Web site. That seems a little strange. Why would they do that?
MCCANN: Actually, I've reviewed an awful lot of that material that is not publicly available, and I asked the people that I work with why that was done. And some of them seemed to think that in fact what it does is, if people go to that Web site and read, you know, in open source, what was seized in a Manchester, U.K., raid, about the methodology and about just the detail that these men are willing to take to come into this country and to do horrible acts, it is astounding.
And I think that it basically bolsters the case here and doesn't detract from the credibility of the FBI, in fact, it supports it.
VAUSE: OK, when we talked about the photograph of a brother in these documents should be without a beard, how does that relate to when we saw those before-and-after photos of the Pakistani jeweler? I mean, that sort of fits in with that category perfectly, doesn't it?
MCCANN: It certainly does. And don't forget also, he was a jeweler, and what was the subject of recent investigations, kiosks here in the United States that sell silver jewelry and semiprecious stone jewelry because it's a cash-only business. And that was investigated to see if that money was being funneled back to Pakistan and then on to the al Qaeda.
So the photo now, it goes to the assumption that in the U.S. we would engage in racial profiling instead of behavioral profiling, and that's why it's stated as such.
VAUSE: OK, we got to leave it there, but thank you very much for those insights today. Very interesting story, one which we're going to follow.
MCCANN: You bet, John.
VAUSE: OK, Kelly.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
