Report: FBI raises terror alarm about South Pacific flying school

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CANBERRA, Australia: U.S. authorities have raised an alarm over a plan by a German citizen — linked to the Sept. 11 terror attacks — to build a flying school in a remote South Pacific island nation, a news report said Wednesday.

Wolfgang Bohringer has been linked to Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker in the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. The German arrived by yacht in Kiribati a year ago with plans to build a flying school, but has since left the far-flung archipelago, Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio reported.

The island where the school was planned was among the country's closest to the U.S. island state of Hawaii, the report said.

Kiribati's President Anote Tong said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation had warned him that it was suspicious of Bohringer, the ABC said.

Tong said the FBI also warned him that small countries like Kiribati, whose 94,000 people live on 33 atolls scattered 4,000 kilometers (1,400 miles) along the equator, could be vulnerable to terrorists, the ABC reported.

"I think it demonstrates how vulnerable small countries can be," Tong told the ABC.

"We confess we don't have the resources to be able to monitor everything and everybody that goes through our system, but it's made us a lot more alert, I think," he said.

"So we do look to neighboring countries like New Zealand, Australia," he said. "We do have relations with the Australian Federal Police."

Tong could not immediately available to comment on the broadcast report.

He told the ABC he had discussed with Bohringer his plans to build a resort and flying school on Fanning Island — an atoll without telecommunications or a functioning airstrip, but among the closest to Hawaii, 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) to the north.

Tong said he was skeptical.

"You've got to be quite wary of very, very good proposals," Tong said.

New Zealand police have said Bohringer's whereabouts are unknown.

Bill Paupe, who runs his own aviation business in Honolulu and is Kiribati's consul in the United States, said the flight school plan made no sense.

"It would be very expensive. You would have to (transport) all the people there ... and all your instructors and your staff would have to be housed and fed and everything," Paupe told the ABC. "It just didn't make any sense at all."

The office of Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, who is responsible for the nation's main security agency, could not immediately say whether the government had been aware of the flying school plan.

"We would consider any request for assistance," said Ruddock's spokesman, Michael Pelly.

Australia's High Commissioner to the Kiribati could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Kiribati's consul to Australia, William Franken, said he was unaware of the plan.

New Zealand's High Commission in the Kiribati capital, Tarawa, "has had no approach yet" from Kiribati authorities for further help with security, said Deputy High Commissioner Dennis Porteous.

"We are aware of the report, and will just wait to see what developments happen," Porteous said.

New Zealand police counterterrorism head, Assistant Commissioner Jon White, said if Kiribati makes a request for security assistance, "we'll take it seriously."

The two nations are members of a South Pacific police chiefs' group, aimed at assisting smaller states with security and other issues.

Witness Is Silent in Terror Probe

Ex-Professor Says Grand Jury Testimony Would Endanger Him

by Jerry Markon
WASHINGTON POST

A potentially key witness has refused to testify in the long-running investigation into whether Islamic charities in Northern Virginia were financing terrorist organizations, according to recently unsealed court documents.

Former Florida professor Sami al-Arian declined to answer questions before a federal grand jury in Alexandria last month, according to documents unsealed in federal court in Tampa. Arian, who was acquitted in one of the nation's highest-profile terrorism cases but then pleaded guilty to a single charge, believes his life would be in danger if he testified, his attorneys told a judge.

Prosecutors want Arian to reveal what they believe are his ties to the International Institute of Islamic Thought, or IIIT, a Herndon think tank that is one of the key organizations under investigation. The probe, which federal officials have called the nation's largest terrorism-financing investigation, is focused on a Herndon-based network of Muslim charities, businesses and think tanks. The Muslim charities deny any terrorist ties.

A federal jury in Tampa deadlocked last year on nine charges that Arian aided terrorists and acquitted him of eight other counts. He then pleaded guilty to one count of supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad and was sentenced to 57 months in prison. With time already served, he was expected to be released from prison and deported next year.

But Arian is now likely to be held in contempt by a federal judge in Alexandria for refusing to testify before the grand jury, his lawyers said last week at a court hearing in Tampa, according to a transcript. That could add as much as 18 months to his prison term unless he relents and testifies. He is unlikely to do so, his attorneys said.

Prosecutors declined to comment yesterday, and two attorneys for Arian did not return telephone calls.

The investigation burst into public view more than four years ago when federal agents swarmed into homes and businesses in Herndon and elsewhere in Northern Virginia. They carted away 500 boxes of documents -- from some of the most established Islamic organizations in the United States -- that they believed contained evidence of an international terrorism financing network.

The March 2002 searches have led to the convictions of two people, including prominent Muslim activist Abdurahman Alamoudi, who admitted that he plotted with Libya to assassinate the Saudi ruler.

No charges have been filed against the principals of the Herndon-based cluster of companies and charities that are at the center of the investigation, and their attorneys and some Muslims have labeled the raids a fishing expedition.

Prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria have strongly defended the raids, saying during a 2004 court hearing that they would file charges against some or all of the Herndon-based network, possibly under racketeering statutes once used to target the Mafia.

The investigation has spanned nearly half a decade, according to court documents and law enforcement officials, because it involves a complex trail of international transactions between corporations and related charitable entities.

The government believes Arian could help untangle the money trail, court documents indicate. In an affidavit filed in support of the search warrants and unsealed in 2003, Homeland Security agent David Kane laid out alleged ties between Arian and IIIT, writing that IIIT was once the largest contributor to what he called a Palestinian Islamic Jihad front group run by Arian.

Arian contends that he has no information that could help the investigation and that any ties between him and IIIT are more than a decade old, according to the documents unsealed in Florida. Arian refused to testify in Alexandria on Oct. 19, and his attorneys tried to quash the subpoena. They argued that it violated his plea agreement with Florida prosecutors because Arian made it clear to prosecutors before he agreed to plead guilty that he would not cooperate with the government. A federal judge in Florida rejected that argument last week.

'Aliens could attack at any time' warns former MoD chief

by Charlotte Gill
DAILY MAIL

UFO sightings and alien visitors tend to be solely the reserve of sci-fi movies.

So when a former MoD chief warns that the country could be attacked by extraterrestrials at any time, you may be forgiven for feeling a little alarmed.

During his time as head of the Ministry of Defence UFO project, Nick Pope was persuaded into believing that other lifeforms may visit Earth and, more specifically, Britain.

His concern is that "highly credible" sightings are simply dismissed.

And he complains that the project he once ran is now "virtually closed" down, leaving the country "wide open" to aliens.

Mr Pope decided to speak out about his worries after resigning from his post at the Directorate of Defence Security at the MoD this week.

"The consequences of getting this one wrong could be huge," he said.

"If you reported a UFO sighting now, I am absolutely sure that you would just get back a standard letter telling you not to worry. ''Frankly we are wide open - if something does not behave like a conventional aircraft now, it will be ignored.

"The X-Files have been closed down." If these words had come from a sci-fi fanatic, they could be easily dismissed by cynics.

But Mr Pope's CV - he was head of the UFO project between 1991 and 1994 - cannot be ignored.

When he began his job, he too was sceptical about UFOs but access to classified files on the subject and investigation of a series of spectacular UFO sightings gradually changed his mind.

And while Mr Pope says that there is no evidence of hostile intent, he insists it cannot be ruled out.

"There has got to be the potential for that and one is left with the uneasy feeling that if it turned out to be so, there is very little we could do about it," he said.

"If you believe these things are extra terrestrial craft then you cannot rule out that what is happening is some kind of covert reconnaissance."

One incident which persuaded him of the existence of alien lifeforms was in 1993. There were reports of a "vast, triangular-shaped craft" spotted flying over RAF bases in the West Midlands.

"Most of the witnesses were police and military personnel," he said.

"Hundreds of members of the public also had sightings over a period of several hours."

In another incident in 1980 at RAF bases in Suffolk, staff investigated a suspected plane crash after bright lights were reported coming from nearby woods.

They found a kind of lunar landing module standing on three legs which then flew off. The indents it left in the ground were found to emit ten times the normal levels of radiation. Mr Pope said: "These sort of incidents are why I got so frustrated.

"In my time I would brief the more interesting sightings up the chain of command to people like the Chief of the Air Staff and would get the answer back that it was very interesting and I had clearly done a good job investigating it and that was it.

"Every one is a piece of a puzzle but no one takes it seriously. There needs to be more resources and people who are prepared to look past the philosophical issues, look at the reports and investigate them properly.

"Whether you believe these things are foreign air forces testing prototype aircraft or whether you believe they are something more exotic, with the speeds and movements they are capable of, it's technology we would very much like to get hold of."

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence insisted that all UFO sightings were investigated for "evidence to suggest that UK airspace has been compromised by hostile or unauthorised air activity."

She said: "Unless there is such evidence, the MoD doesn't attempt to positively identify what was seen."

Mr Pope is continuing his UFO research in a private capacity since leaving the MoD and is recognised as a leading authority on UFOs and the unexpected.

He has written four science fiction books drawing on his experience at the MoD, and lectures around the world on the subject.

He has appeared on BBC Newsnight and Radio 4's Today programme and has acted as consultant on numerous television documentaries.