- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A
suspected American al Qaeda operative accused of plotting a radioactive
"dirty bomb" attack on the United States has not yet given authorities
information on his associates, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz
said on Tuesday.
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- Wolfowitz also said Abdullah al Muhajir, a U.S. citizen
of Puerto Rican descent, and his accomplices had additional al Qaeda-directed
plans to harm Americans.
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- "He came into this country with the intention, by
various means, not just the dirty bomb idea, of killing hundreds and maybe
thousands of Americans," he said on CBS' "The Early Show."
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- Detained by the FBI in Chicago on May 8, al Muhajir was
declared an "enemy combatant" by President Bush over the weekend
and transferred to a naval brig in South Carolina.
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- But Wolfowitz said the former gang member had not provided
information to investigators.
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- "To the best of my knowledge he hasn't cooperated
at all so far," Wolfowitz said on NBC's "Today Show."
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- "He clearly had associates and one of the things
we want to ask him about is who those associates were and how we can track
them down," he added on CBS.
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- Wolfowitz said it was clear to investigators, however,
that al Muhajir had had "a great deal of contact" with the al
Qaeda network of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden, and that "he was clearly
taking a great deal of instruction."
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- Authorities said on Monday al Muhajir had trained with
al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan and was in the planning stages of
launching a so-called dirty bomb attack, which combines a conventional
bomb with radioactive material, somewhere in the United States.
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- Washington blames bin Laden's network for the Sept. 11
attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people.
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- Wolfowitz said al Muhajir apparently planned to get radioactive
material for the bomb from somewhere within the United States.
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- "This man actually thought he could get them from
places like university labs," he said. "I have no idea how difficult
that would be but there is nuclear material around in a lot places."
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- The New York-born Jose Padilla, 31. who changed his name
to Abdullah al Muhajir, was being held by the Defense Department as an
"enemy combatant," which under the rules of war allows him to
be held until the end of the conflict and questioned without an attorney
present.
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- Civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties
Union have criticized the detention and said he should be tried in U.S.
court.
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- "What we're about here is preventing," Wolfowitz
said. "Preventing him from doing further acts, preventing those about
whom he may have knowledge from doing further acts."
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- If authorities decide to prosecute al Muhajir he will
be transferred back to civil courts, Wolfowitz said.
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- Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American-born Saudi national detained
in Afghanistan, is a second U.S. citizen known to be held by the Defense
Department.
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- John Walker Lindh, another American captured while fighting
with the Taliban in Afghanistan, is facing trail in a federal court in
Virginia. He is in the custody of the Justice Department.
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- Wolfowitz spoke from a spot outside the Pentagon where
one of the hijacked airliners crashed Sept. 11, to note that workers had
almost completed reconstruction efforts.
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- Poised to lay the final piece of limestone, he said officials
planned to also place a time capsule to honor those killed in the attack.
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- "It's also a way of honoring the incredible determination
and resolve of the workers who put this building back together so quickly,"
he said on CBS.
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- "I think its symbolic of the resolve of the American
people to prevail over people like Abdullah al Muhajir."
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