U.S. Citizen Accused of Planning an Attack Using a ‘Dirty’ Bomb

WASHINGTON —  A onetime Chicago gang member who turned to Islam in a Florida jail allegedly plotted with senior Al Qaeda operatives to detonate a radioactive bomb on American soil, authorities said Monday.

Jose Padilla, 31, who also goes by the name Abdullah al Muhajir, was in the early stages of planning an attack in the United States when he was quietly apprehended last month at Chicago O’Hare International Airport after flying from Zurich, Switzerland. He had been under surveillance for several weeks before his arrest, law enforcement sources said.

Padilla met with one of Osama bin Laden’s top chieftains--Abu Zubeida--and other senior leaders this year to plot an attack that could spew massive amounts of radioactive waste, intelligence officials said. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft described it as “an unfolding terrorist attack.”

The conspiracy outlined by Ashcroft provides evidence that Zubeida has become an important source of detailed information about Al Qaeda activities since his arrest in Pakistan in late March.

Padilla had more than $10,000 in cash on him at the time of his arrest--money that he appears to have traveled to Switzerland from Pakistan to collect for his mission, the sources said. Al Qaeda operatives have often used wire transfers to finance their operations, but Padilla’s use of cash may indicate that U.S. authorities have succeeded in shutting down traditional money pipelines and forcing operatives to use riskier measures, the officials said.

Authorities are uncertain about Padilla’s target. “He had indicated some knowledge of the Washington, D.C., area, but I want to emphasize ... there was not an actual plan. We stopped this man in the initial planning stages,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz said.

Padilla’s discussions with Al Qaeda leaders about detonating a “dirty” bomb were “substantial,” FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said.

In a key meeting in March with senior Al Qaeda operatives in Karachi, Pakistan, Padilla “discussed not only this proposed dirty bomb but other possible attacks on the United States, including blowing up hotels and gas stations,” a U.S. intelligence official said. Padilla is now in military custody.

A so-called dirty bomb is a conventional explosive encased in radioactive waste, capable of scattering hazardous debris over hundreds of yards. The allegations against Padilla appear to confirm authorities’ long-held fears that Al Qaeda would seek to employ such a devastating weapon, and his arrest also points up the often unexplored threat posed by U.S. citizens who may be secretly aligned with extremist groups, terrorism experts said.

U.S. Citizens Recruited

While U.S. authorities have taken aggressive steps since Sept. 11 to guard against foreign visa holders who may be terrorists, the allegations against Padilla signal that Al Qaeda operatives are “very much aware” that U.S. citizens may be apt to draw less suspicion at the borders, said Harry “Skip” Brandon, former head of intelligence at the FBI.

“This is a matter of real concern, and we may have to expand our focus,” Brandon said. “I don’t know how many U.S. citizens they can find to help, but it certainly seems as if they’re trying.”

Said Ashcroft: “Al Qaeda officials knew that as a U.S. citizen, holding a valid U.S. passport, [Padilla] would be able to travel freely in the United States without drawing attention to himself.”

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), in Chicago on Monday to tour the city’s emergency call center, said the arrest was a reminder that the country’s campaign against terrorism is far from over. “The enemy is out there. The enemy is working and plotting and planning to strike again.”

Padilla, born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican descent, is the third U.S. citizen known to be in American custody because of overseas ties to Al Qaeda or the network’s Taliban protectors.

John Walker Lindh is facing trial in Virginia on charges that he conspired to murder Americans in fighting for the Taliban. Another Taliban fighter, Yasser Esam Hamdi, was captured in Afghanistan and flown to the United States in April after records indicated he was born in Louisiana and held dual U.S.-Saudi citizenship.

Although Lindh and Hamdi fought with the Taliban, no evidence has emerged to suggest that either man was plotting an attack on U.S. soil.

Padilla, in contrast, was an American trained by Al Qaeda to attack his home country, authorities alleged.

“He researched nuclear weapons and received training in explosives wiring while in Pakistan, and he was instructed to return to the United States to conduct reconnaissance operations for Al Qaeda,” Wolfowitz told reporters.

Padilla’s arrest thrusts him into the national spotlight after a troubled life that has seen him in and out of jail for much of the last two decades.

Moving from Brooklyn to Chicago with his family around age 5 in 1975, he was raised in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood on the city’s west side. The area, plagued by high crime and high dropout rates, is home to many of the city’s Latino gangs, and Padilla fell into the gang life in his teenage years, authorities said.

As a juvenile, Padilla was arrested at least five times, authorities said.

On one occasion, he was charged as an accessory to murder but, because Illinois juvenile records are sealed, it was unclear Monday whether he was convicted in that case. Public records show that at 15, he was convicted on three felony charges: armed robbery, attempted armed robbery and aggravated battery. He was in custody in Illinois from late 1985 until mid-1988.

Padilla moved to a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., but was soon in trouble with the law again. In a traffic altercation in October 1991, he pulled a gun and fired a shot at another car and was incarcerated for nearly a year, getting into more trouble behind bars for shoving a corrections officer.

Padilla told government interrogators after his arrest in Chicago that he turned to Islam while incarcerated in the Broward County Jail and ultimately took his Islamic name.

“He met some people in jail who made him think about Islam, he converted to Islam, and he got really serious when he got out--serious about his religious pursuit,” according to a law enforcement official who asked not to be identified.

After his release from jail in 1992, Padilla continued to get into occasional scrapes with the law until he left Florida in 1998 for overseas, authorities said. He is believed to have lived and traveled in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in the Middle East, officials said.

His contacts with Al Qaeda dated to at least last year, when he had several meetings with senior operatives, Ashcroft said.

Intelligence officials said Padilla first met Zubeida late last year in the eastern Afghanistan city of Khost and traveled with him. Zubeida then sent Padilla to Pakistan for training in wiring and set up further meetings to plot the dirty bomb attacks. Padilla also researched dirty bombs at an Al Qaeda site in Lahore in eastern Pakistan, the intelligence officials said.

Intelligence officials said it is not known whether Padilla trained in Al Qaeda’s terrorist camps, the tie that binds many suspected Al Qaeda operatives around the globe.

But a Justice Department official who asked not to be identified said: “He’s considered an Al Qaeda operative.”

It was the capture of Zubeida in March that led U.S. investigators to Padilla, officials said.

Padilla “was identified as someone who was interested in lighting off a dirty bomb. [Zubeida] gave him up,” according to a Bush administration official who asked not to be identified.

Zubeida did not name the man, according to a senior intelligence official, but “he provided information that allowed us to piece together other information to figure out who he was talking about” in late April.

The intelligence official said the other information came from other Al Qaeda officials in U.S. custody as well as from various documents recovered in Afghanistan and elsewhere that outline Al Qaeda’s apparent interest in building and using a radioactive bomb.

“We had separate information from other sources, both human and documentary, that supported the notion that there was such a guy,” the official said.

“We started trying to figure out who he was and eventually did,” the official added. “Then we tried to figure out where he was. Then we determined he was planning on coming to the U.S. So he was under surveillance.”

Arrested in Chicago

That surveillance spanned several weeks, as Padilla traveled from Pakistan to Zurich, then to Egypt and back to Zurich.

Authorities were able to identify a flight they believed Padilla was planning to take from Zurich to Chicago arriving on May 8. FBI agents were on board the flight, but they did not take him into custody until he had gotten off the plane and gone through customs--declaring only $8,000 of the $10,526 in cash that he had on him.

Padilla was in Justice Department custody for more than a month as a material witness--a status that allowed his indefinite detention.

On Sunday, at the recommendation of the Justice Department and the Pentagon, President Bush declared Padilla an “enemy combatant” and authorized his transfer to military custody.

After weeks of attacks on the intelligence community over missed warning signs in the weeks before Sept. 11, Bush administration officials said Padilla’s arrest marked a clear success.

Bush said the arrest came because of “the vigilance of our intelligence gathering and law enforcement.”

And FBI director Mueller, whose agency has been feuding with the CIA over Sept. 11 failings, made sure to thank his counterparts for their critical assistance in the case.

“Our principal priority is preventing future terrorist attacks,” he said. “And this instance is an example of prevention.”

Times staff writers Edwin Chen and Richard A. Serrano in Washington, John-Thor Dahlburg in Florida and Eric Slater in Chicago contributed to this report.