Eileen O'Connor looks at the hijackers' trail

O'Connor

(CNN) -- CNN National Correspondent Eileen O'Connor in Washington has been following the investigation into the terror attacks. We spoke with her about the latest developments.

CNN: The searches that are under way in residences in New Jersey and Florida. What can you tell us about those?

O'Connor: First of all, the search of the residence in Jersey City is connected to two men the authorities have in custody. They took them into custody Wednesday, took them off a train. The train was from St. Louis to San Antonio, but the men had tickets [for] and had been onboard a plane that left Newark toward San Antonio on Tuesday. That plane was diverted when the hijackings began.

Those men then got on a train [and] started going toward San Antonio. They were taken off the train and -- shockingly, according to law enforcement sources -- they had box cutters on them. Now, we know from Barbara Olson, who was on the plane that left from Dulles and crashed into the Pentagon, said to her husband the hijackers had box cutters, were using them as weapons. So that was a pretty chilling discovery for investigators. They don't know if it was coincidence, but it doesn't look good.

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In addition, they searched a home in Texas of a man whose name is similar to two hijackers, possibly a relation, and possibly the destination of these two other men.

And, up in New Jersey they ... have these two men in custody and they say that they have been providing useful information. That led them to this house ... in Jersey City. There, they found some useful information. I've been running that house through computer records. We are coming up with potentially some other names that may be on an FBI "watch list," [people who] may be associates of the hijackers and their associates.

Now, in addition, there's a home in Florida that's being searched in Delray Beach. [It] is the home of at least two of the hijackers. And ... some of the names coming up at that house are seen as names off of the watch list. So, these homes obviously are targets of the investigation.

What the investigators are trying to do here -- and it's very, very difficult -- is basically backtrack: They're re-creating -- "Where were these guys for the last six years?" They're finding that many of them attended flight school in this country. They're finding that many of them attended community colleges and studied things like engineering. And they're finding that their links go all the way ... to Germany.

A chilling discovery -- one of the hijackers had actually received training in shipbuilding. Well, we're also finding links between these groups, these people, to the bombing of the USS Cole.

CNN: This just keeps coming up -- last fall's attack on the Cole, and this meeting that occurred in Malaysia.

O'Connor: This is where authorities are really disturbed. And there's a lot of -- I wouldn't say "finger-pointing" -- but there's a lot of shuffling of the papers on this one.

[One of the men], Khalid Al-Midhar, who was on American 77 out of Dulles, the one that crashed into the Pentagon, [has the same] last name as a man who kidnapped several British, American and German tourists in Yemen.

[This] man was linked to people who were associated with the attack on the Cole. Khalid Al-Midhar was seen by some kind of electronic surveillance or photographic images, by intelligence, meeting with someone who later attacked the Cole -- before the attack -- was seen meeting them in Malaysia.

Now, he and Salem Alhamzi -- because of this association with the Cole [they were friends] -- were on a watch list. And that watch list [was] part of an active investigation, a manhunt really, by the FBI, for these two guys. A couple of weeks before these attacks, they were looking for these men in the United States. They came in, in July, and they knew that they had come into this country -- they were looking for them.

We are trying to determine who "dropped the ball." The FAA says it's not sure that it had seen that they were on this list. The airlines are saying that there was nothing that came up when they plugged the names in the computer. So, what happened? That's what everyone's questioning. Could this have been avoided, had they taken these guys in?

But I think the first order of business, instead of pointing fingers, is finding these guys' associates. Because when you look at what they took off that train -- those guys [with] these box cutters -- maybe it's just a coincidence, my sources say, but a striking coincidence. This doesn't mean they're guilty, but it does mean that they're looking at this very seriously. Sources have told me that they seriously believe that there were other planes that were supposed to be hijacked, other things targeted, and those plans were thwarted.

And the reason they say that is that they had intercepted conversations on that Pennsylvania flight that we heard about days ago and reported. And now, it's like going backward in our own reporting. You start sifting these pieces, and the pieces just start becoming bigger and bigger waves of information.

And now you look at that intercepted conversation -- we heard the hijackers say, "We have other planes, we have other targets" -- and you see these people with the box cutters and you wonder, was that what they were talking about? But again, I want to caution, it could be a coincidence. We don't want to condemn people who are totally innocent.

CNN: So, law enforcement then has a two-pronged approach toward those still in the country -- there's either the possibility of other terrorist acts or the possibility that they're trying to leave the country?

O'Connor: Absolutely, and we're not just talking about this country. They've made an arrest in Brussels, they've made an arrest in Germany, they've made an arrest in the Philippines. They're making arrests all over the world. This network -- we're finding links now everywhere.

CNN: What are your thoughts on the speed with which law enforcement has been able to turn up all this information?

O'Connor: Well, my question is, Why didn't we know this before? I have to ask the question, and it will be asked, Why have we been able to come up with all this information so quickly? And, by the way, sometimes we have beaten people to apartments -- we beat the federal authorities to apartments because we've done computer checks.

CNN: And that shows how much information is out there in the public domain?

O'Connor: Absolutely. And that's what makes me wonder, Why wasn't this stuff done before? And I have to say that, in other countries, when people come in on student visas, they're checked. The question involves civil liberties in the United States and we're going to have to question, How much of a good thing is a bad thing?