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Arpil 25 issue - It's part of the routine for air travel since 9/11. Fifteen minutes after KLM Flight 685 took off from Amsterdam for Mexico City on April 8, Mexican authorities forwarded the names of all the passengers to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The reason: the flight was scheduled to pass through U.S. airspace after making a long swing over Canada. The information was then passed on to the U.S. National Targeting Center, based at a secret address in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. That's when the routine became extraordinary: by the time the Boeing 747 had finished its three-hour crossing of the Atlantic, Homeland Security screeners were on high alert. The names of two Saudi passengers aboard the KLM flight had begun producing "hits" on the screening center's lists of 70,000 suspect foreigners.
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One of these hitsfrom an FBI database of terror suspects known as TIPOFFsmacked investigators right between the eyes. The two Saudis, the database reported, were brothers and pilots who had attended the same Arizona flight school as 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour. Soon the multiplicity of U.S. terror databases started pumping out similar hits. Fearing that Flight 685 might be a 9/11-style plot in the making, U.S. authorities refused the plane overflight rights, and Canada rejected a request to land. Much to the chagrin of its 278 passengers, the KLM jet made an exhausting odyssey back to Amsterdam.
Was it a plot? The KLM 685 incidentwhich was not widely publicized by the U.S. governmentis an illustration of just how hard it has become to tell ordinary guys from bad guys in the war on terror. Washington's concern about the KLM flight seems legitimate: in the past year, U.S. counterterrorism officials have cited intelligence indicating that Al Qaeda might be planning to use foreign-based airliners to launch attacks against the U.S. homeland. One U.S. counterterrorism official told NEWSWEEK that the two passengers were "bad dudes." And a European intelligence official said the two have "extensive but secondary" links to Al Qaeda.
At least one of the two Saudis had previously been deported from the United States, according to Homeland Security sources. A former neighbor in Arizona, who asked to remain anonymous, recalled that federal officials in full body armor rushed the Saudi's empty house several weeks after 9/11 and later arrested him. During FBI questioning, a law-enforcement official told NEWSWEEK, the Saudi acknowledged knowing Hani Hanjour. Upon further questioning, he also conceded that he had known another of the 9/11 hijackers.
Even so, by the end of last week the reasons the Saudi brothers gave for their trip to Mexico appeared to be holding up, U.S. investigators conceded. The men told authorities they were visiting their ill father, a retired Saudi diplomat who is living in Mexico. A Saudi official in Riyadh later told NEWSWEEK that the father was a former "administrative employee" of the Saudi Foreign Ministry, but that he has not worked for the government for 10 years and has a Mexican wife. One counterterrorism official said authorities were aware of the family and had been watching the brothers for some time, adding, "I just don't think this was a plot along the lines of 9/11." Much as some intelligence officials insist that the Saudis have Qaeda links, no Western agency made a move to arrest them. (Because of the ambiguous nature of the case, NEWSWEEK has decided not to publish their names.)
So did the United States overreact? "There are so many people on that watch list that shouldn't be on it," explained a U.S. official privy to the KLM case. "But you have to err on the side of caution in the post-9/11 world. You've got a plane with unknown quantities hurtling towards the U.S. You're going to act first and think later." Unfortunately, some foreign governments now think Washington does too much acting and too little thinking. While the Bush administration has made the case that this is a war without rules, Europeans still tend to see counterterrorism as a law-enforcement problem. That is partly why Dutch and other European authorities, lacking direct proof of a crime or plot, decided not to detain the two Saudis. Yet even the Europeans aren't completely on the same page. Officials with Dutch and U.S. intelligence say that after the two men arrived back in Amsterdam, they flew to London, where they were refused entry. Then they flew back to the Netherlands, where they were under surveillance before returning on their own to Saudi Arabia. British officials were later peeved that Dutch authorities failed to communicate to them the full tale of KLM 685. A Saudi official later told NEWSWEEK the two men had been detained for questioning.
Some counterterrorism officials worry that the Saudi brothers could be living double lives. One of the Saudis lived in the United States for at least 14 years and took an engineering degree at Arizona State University. A former neighbor of his in Tempe remembers him as "really nice." But another former Arizona neighbor recalls that a day or two after 9/11, the normally self-contained Saudi was behaving oddly. "He was wearing a wide grin. He said, 'Hi, Neighbor, isn't it a great day?' It seemed inappropriate." Other intelligence officials say if the two were indeed part of a Qaeda operation, it is no surprise their destination was Mexico City. U.S. officials fear that Latin America, and more particularly Mexicowith its porous U.S. bordermay become a staging ground for Al Qaeda. The big question is, wherever the next threat comes from, will authorities be able to spot it in time? The possibilities for mistaken identity are many, but the room for error is very, very narrow.
With Michael Isikoff and John Barry in Washington, Friso Endt at Schiphol airport (Amsterdam), Andrew Murr in Phoenix, Joseph Contreras in Miami, Christopher Dickey in Paris and Ruth Tenenbaum in New York
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.