Task force probing Hub link to attacks

By Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff, 9/11/2001

uthorities in Boston today began searching for a terrorist group that carried out the most crucial part of the most coordinated, audacious terrorist attack ever directed at Americans.

Boston Police Superintendent-in-Chief James Hussey said a task force of local police, the State Police, the FBI, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was trying to determine if those who commandeered a pair of Boston-to-Los Angeles flights had been in Boston for some time, plotting the attack.

Hussey said that while it is too soon to determine who carried out the hijacking and deliberate crashing of at least four US commercial airliners, the recent presence in Boston of two men with links to the terrorist Osama bin Laden would lead many investigators to suspect that organization was involved.

But Hussey stressed that authorities had no other clues that would implicate the bin Laden organization.

A former FBI agent, who was based in Boston for more than a decade, said it was no surprise that at least part of the operation was launched here, saying the bin Laden organization has members and sympathizers in the area.

Boston, he said, has ''a lot of terrorist cells in this area. It's a facilitator for terrorist activity. There have been cells here of bin Laden's associates. They're entrenched here. They're able to use this area because of the proximity to New York and to fold into the local population, and they're able to facilitate terrorist attacks.''

The former agent knew of a convenience store in the Quincy Market area that was under surveillance because its owner had alleged links to bin Laden.

Boston has in the past been home to trusted agents of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi fundamentalist who allegedly directs an international terrorist conspiracy directed at the United States from an unknown refuge in Afghanistan. Bassam A. Kanj, who lived in Boston for nearly 15 years, and Raed M. Hijazi, who was here for two years, were tied to separate militant and terrorist plots financed by bin Laden.

Both men lived in Everett and Boston and drove taxi cabs.

The FBI has investigated how both men received their orders and funding from the bin Laden organization.

Within hours of yesterday's attack, Massachusetts State Police and a Norfolk County prosecutor were interviewing employees at a Norwood airline charter company after learning of reports that a trio of men who appeared to be from the Middle East had tried to charter a corporate jet at Norwood Airport on Monday.

But Fred Snyderman, the CEO of Eastern Air Center, said he had already spoken with his two charter agents and that both of them had dismissed the report as an unfounded rumor.

Police, meanwhile, fear that some innocent Arabs living in the Boston area may be singled out for retaliatory attacks in the expected fallout of grief and anger following the worst terrorist attack against Americans.

''We are very aware of that possibility, and we will do everything we can to avoid anything like that happening,'' said Hussey.

Hussey said police didn't know how the terrorists got access to the cockpits of the two Boston flights.

''We don't know if there was a breach of security,'' he said. ''It's possible there was no security breach,'' Hussey added, raising the possibility that the hijacker or hijackers bluffed their way into the cockpit by claiming to have a weapon.

Joseph Lawless, the director of public safety for Massport, which operates Logan Airport, said it was too soon to know if there was a security breach that allowed armed hijackers onto the flights that originated at Logan.

Lawless said Logan was shut down about 9:15 a.m., moments after the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center.

Moments after American Airlines Flight 11, from Boston to Los Angeles, crashed into the World Trade Center, local authorities swung into action, fearing Boston would also be targeted by the most coordinated, devastating terrorist attack ever in the United States.

When authorities learned that it was a flight out of Logan Airport that had been hijacked and driven into the New York landmark, their emergency plans took on greater urgency.

''It was obvious, then, that there is a terrorist cell operating here in New England,'' said Louis Elisa, the former regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The Hancock and Prudential towers were evacuated within minutes of the second plane crashing into the New York towers.

Acting Governor Jane M. Swift sent nearly all of the state's 55,000 nonessential state workers home, and most of the 1,500 state buildings were closed. Most banking and financial institutions were shut down, and panicky workers spilled onto the streets of the Financial District in downtown Boston.

Logan International Airport, along with all other US airports, was ordered shut down by the Federal Aviation Administration.

About 9 a.m., the Boston Emergency Management Agency, headed by Boston Deputy Fire Chief Kevin MacCurtain, convened at City Hall, joined by Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Police Commissioner Paul F. Evans, and Fire Chief Paul Christian.

Firefighter Steve MacDonald, a department spokesman, said the agency's first action was to cancel all training and order all of the city's fire trucks back to their stations.

''Then we just sat tight, waiting to see if anything happened here and we were needed,'' said MacDonald.

Already, FEMA had set up a regional operating center in a bunker at Maynard. Elisa, who now runs a private company, World Disaster Management, said that the Massachusetts-based urban search and rescue team, based in Beverly, will probably be the first outside group to head into New York City to aid officials there.

''We're the closest, so we'll go in first,'' he said.

Judy Rakowsky and Michael Rezendes of the Globe Staff contributed to this report.

This story ran on page A6 of the Boston Globe on 9/11/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.