Investigators think Sept. 11, 1995 plot related

Southeast Asian intelligence officials believe Hambali was a link between 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and September 11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar.

MANILA, Philippines (CNN) -- Intelligence officials in Southeast Asia say the suspected hijackers involved in the September 11 attacks may have reviewed plans from a foiled 1995 terrorist plot -- discovered in the Philippines -- that called for the hijacking and crashing of commercial planes into buildings in the United States.

The conduit, the officials say they believe, was Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali. Malaysian and Singaporean officials say Hambali is al Qaeda's main operator in the region, and may have helped plan the September 11 attacks.

Intelligence sources say that in January 2000, Hambali was videotaped meeting in Malaysia with two of the alleged September 11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. A third man, Zacarias Moussaoui, now facing terrorism-related charges in the United States, met with Hambali's aide later that year.

Hambali's name first came to the attention of Philippine investigators in 1995, when he was listed among the directors of Konsojaya, a Malaysian company that investigators believe funded the terrorist cell discovered in the Philippines that year.

Philippine investigators said that if the United States had followed up on what was learned from a seized computer at that time, the attacks of September 11 might have been averted.

"They should have prevented it because the plan then, and what was going to happen in the future, is there in the disks," said former Philippine police inspector Aida Fariscal, who discovered the terrorists' safe-house apartment.

A senior U.S. official acknowledged that information was given to the U.S. government, but said the U.S. government gets dozens of tips of terror plots and conspiracies every week.

Philippine authorities seized Yousef's computer after an apartment fire.

The computer seized in 1995 belonged to Ramzi Yousef, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. He told authorities he wanted to bring the buildings down but failed. According to classified documents obtained by CNN, he didn't stop trying.

Yousef's partner, Abdul Hakim Murad, told authorities here that Yousef planned to target the World Trade Center again, along with other buildings.

Murad was a commercial pilot trained in the Philippines, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Under interrogation, he told police he was one of the first pilots recruited by Yousef for what was supposed to be a suicide mission.

"That's the start, how he confided to me the proposal of Mr. Yousef to use or to hijack commercial planes and dive it into ... the CIA headquarters and the Pentagon," Col. Rodolfo Mendoza, an intelligence investigator, told CNN. He interrogated Murad for nearly four months. Among the other targets mentioned were the Sears Building in Chicago, Illinois, and the Transamerica Building in San Francisco, California.

Those plans were cut short by an accidental chemical fire in the terrorist group's safe-house apartment in Manila in 1995. That led to Murad's arrest and forced Yousef to flee to Pakistan, where he was arrested. Evidence found in that apartment later helped to convict Murad and Yousef in the United States. They are both serving life sentences.

But not all of those involved in the plot were arrested.

"There were five cells, but four cells have already been decimated before September 11, and there's just this one cell, which I guess is being run by this person, Hambali," said Andrea Domingo, the Philippines' commissioner of immigration.

Recent arrests have led to more evidence linking Hambali to a series of bombings in Jakarta and Manila in 2000 -- what officials in Manila fear may have been practice runs for al Qaeda's larger plans in the region.