Los Angeles Times
PARIS — After he allegedly failed in his first attempt to board a Paris-to-Miami flight and blow it out of the sky with explosives packed into his shoes, Richard Reid sent an urgent e-mail to his suspected terrorist handler, according to a Western diplomatic official familiar with the case.
Reid was spending the night at an airport hotel after missing the Dec. 21 flight because of a lengthy interrogation by police. What should he do? The reply, which is believed to have come from his al-Qaida boss in Pakistan, was swift and clear, according to the official.
"He got a quick response from his handler: Try again," the official said.
The next day, Reid was cleared to travel, boarded American Airlines Flight 63 and allegedly tried to ignite the explosive devices in his shoes but was overpowered by the passengers and crew. The investigation since has centered largely on e-mails with suspected confederates during long hours hunched over computer terminals in cyber cafes in Brussels, Belgium, and Paris in December.
The e-mails and other emerging evidence have reinforced suspicions that Reid was more than a freelance terrorist loosely affiliated with al-Qaida. In fact, investigators believe the enigmatic shoe bomber jailed in the United States had ties to al-Qaida terrorists in Europe suspected in two other major conspiracies: an aborted plot to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Paris and the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, a renowned anti-Taliban guerrilla leader, in Afghanistan just two days before the Sept. 11 attacks.
At least 19 suspects in those plots, both of which allegedly were ordered by Osama bin Laden, have been arrested in recent months in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain.
Investigators have found leads that could link all three cases, which at first seemed to be separate and compartmentalized operations in the trademark style of bin Laden’s al-Qaida network, according to European law enforcement officials and others familiar with the cases.
The hulking, shaggy-haired 28-year-old remains a cipher in many ways: a drifter who dressed like a bum and traveled as much as an executive. Reid baffles police because his methods seem alternately slick and clumsy. Despite his allegedly stealthy preparations for the attack, a French intelligence official told the Los Angeles Times that one reason Reid attracted suspicion at his first airport check-in is because he was listening to a tape of the Koran on a Walkman, apparently to psyche himself up.
During the crucial days and weeks before his attempted attack, Reid apparently communicated with e-mail addresses in Belgium, France and the Netherlands as well as in Pakistan, where he had spent recent years immersed in Islamic extremism. Reid, the son of a Jamaican father and British mother, made his most recent trip to Pakistan in August.
But among the Internet messages he sent from Europe, according to the Western official, police have found an e-mail that reveals a moment of humanity: a farewell note to his mother in Britain.
The message sent shortly before Dec. 21 alluded to an act that would bring Reid martyrdom and urged his mother one last time to convert to Islam, a longtime obsession of his that had contributed to their estrangement.
"It was very clear that it was a goodbye letter," the Western official said. "He said he was going out in a burst of glory for Allah. But it was not specific what he was going to do or why."
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