| Submit your comments on this article |
| The Investigation |
| Feds may know who Binny's paymaster is... |
| 2001-09-23 |
Investigators believe they have spotted the operation's paymaster, also possibly a key figure in the funding of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network. He has been identified to Newsweek as Mustafa Ahmed, in the United Arab Emirates. On September 4, Atta sent a package from a Kinko's in Hollywood, Florida to Ahmed. ``We don't know for sure what was in the package,'' a senior U.S. official tells Newsweek. ``But Mustafa could be the key to bin Laden's finances. We're taking a hard look at him.'' (Several of the hijackers also wired money to Ahmed.) But it wasn't only Atta who was sending back money. According to the October 1 Newsweek cover story, ``Trail of Terror'' (on newsstands Monday, September 24), investigators learned that in the week before the September 11 attack, the hijackers began sending small amounts of money back to their paymasters in the Middle East. ``They were sending in their change,'' an intelligence source tells Newsweek. ``They were going to a place where they wouldn't need money.'' The hijackers apparently didn't need all that much to begin with: law enforcement estimates that the entire plot, flight lessons and all, cost as little as $200,000. That is ten times more than the first World Trade Center bombing, but still a small enough sum so the money could be moved in small denominations among trusted agents, report Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas, Investigative Correspondents Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball and Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |