Collaborators sought

Published 9:00 pm Thursday, September 13, 2001

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — U.S. investigators pressed Thursday to identify terrorist collaborators who may still be in a position to strike more Americans, and agents located critical "black boxes" from two of Tuesday’s hijacked planes.

Four U.S. officials said authorities are investigating the possibility that some terrorists involved with Tuesday’s plots are still at large.

The FBI searched the country and abroad for possible suspects who had recent flight training, ties to the hijackers or their backers, or attempted to enter the United States recently, said these officials.

Agents have been examining manifests of flights that were not hijacked on Tuesday to find matches with people who fit this profile, the officials said.

The concerns are also being driven by fresh intelligence suggesting a continuing threat, the officials added.

The data "suggests we haven’t seen the end of this current threat," one U.S. official said. He cited concerns terrorists may strike in a different manner now that airport security has been beefed up.

Signs of fear were everywhere. The U.S. Capitol was evacuated for a suspicious package and New York’s airports were temporarily closed to incoming flights. One man was arrested in New York with a fake pilot’s identification. A security ring around the White House was widened.

Investigators recovered a black box flight recorder from the hijacked plane that went down in Pennsylvania, and picked up a signal from the recorder in the jet that slammed into the Pentagon.

The recorders could contain information about the last minutes of the hijacked commercial jetliners.

FBI Special Agent Bill Crowley said the recorder in Pennsylvania was found at about 1:20 p.m. PDT in the 8-foot crater caused by the crash. Crowley said the recorder would be analyzed by the National Transportation Safety Board.

"We’re hoping it will have some information pertinent to what happened on the plane," Crowley said. "This development is going to help a lot."

An FBI official was headed for the Azores islands to interview two Iranians detained a week ago after they tried to travel to Canada with fake passports, authorities said. Mexican Defense Secretary Gen. Rafael Macedo said officials are searching the country for at least nine people who may have helped plan the attacks.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said a total of 18 hijackers took over the four planes. The Justice Department had planned to release the hijackers’ names and photos, but pulled back late Thursday.

All were ticketed passengers, but some may have used aliases, officials said.

A number of people that could be involved in the plot were detained overnight for having false identification, Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said.

One focus of the FBI is on flight schools in Florida and Minnesota that trained some of the men apparently involved in the hijackings. The owner of a Minnesota flight school said FBI agents had contacted him asking about specific people.

The FBI questioned a Fort Smith, Ark., couple after telling police agencies across the state Wednesday that the woman was "possibly related to the New York City terrorist attack," state police spokeswoman Kim Fontaine said. The husband was being held Thursday for federal immigration officials, and the woman was taken away by agents and her whereabouts were not released, the Southwest Times Record newspaper at Fort Smith reported.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.