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Inspectors examining Ressam's rental car found the explosives concealed in
the spare tire well, but at first they assumed the white powder and viscous liq-
uid were drug-related--until an inspector pried apart and identified one of the
four timing devices concealed within black boxes. Ressam was placed under
arrest. Investigators guessed his target was in Seattle.They did not learn about
the Los Angeles airport planning until they reexamined evidence seized in
Montreal in 2000; they obtained further details when Ressam began cooper-
ating in May 2001.
28
Emergency Cooperation
After the disruption of the plot in Amman, it had not escaped notice in Wash-
ington that Hijazi had lived in California and driven a cab in Boston and that
Deek was a naturalized U.S. citizen who, as Berger reminded President Clin-
ton, had been in touch with extremists in the United States as well as abroad.
29
Before Ressam's arrest, Berger saw no need to raise a public alarm at home--
although the FBI put all field offices on alert.
30
Now, following Ressam's arrest, the FBI asked for an unprecedented num-
ber of special wiretaps. Both Berger and Tenet told us that their impression was
that more Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) wiretap requests were
processed during the millennium alert than ever before.
31
The next day, writing about Ressam's arrest and links to a cell in Mon-
treal, Berger informed the President that the FBI would advise police in the
United States to step up activities but would still try to avoid undue public
alarm by stressing that the government had no specific information about
planned attacks.
32
At a December 22 meeting of the Small Group of principals, FBI Director
Louis Freeh briefed officials from the NSC staff, CIA, and Justice on wiretaps
and investigations inside the United States, including a Brooklyn entity tied to
the Ressam arrest, a seemingly unreliable foreign report of possible attacks on
seven U.S. cities, two Algerians detained on the Canadian border, and searches
in Montreal related to a jihadist cell.The Justice Department released a state-
ment on the alert the same day.
33
Clarke's staff warned,"Foreign terrorist sleeper cells are present in the US and attacks
in the US are likely."
34
Clarke asked Berger to try to make sure that the domes-
tic agencies remained alert."Is there a threat to civilian aircraft?" he wrote. Clarke
also asked the principals in late December to discuss a foreign security service
report about a Bin Ladin plan to put bombs on transatlantic flights.
35
The CSG met daily. Berger said that the principals met constantly.
36
Later,
when asked what made her decide to ask Ressam to step out of his vehicle,
Diana Dean, a Customs inspector who referred Ressam to secondary inspec-
tion, testified that it was her "training and experience."
37
It appears that the
heightened sense of alert at the national level played no role in Ressam's
detention.
FROM THREAT TO THREAT
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