U.S. agents glean clues from curios left behind

WASHINGTON -- From Afghanistan to Europe to the U.S. Midwest, suspected terrorists, often beating a hasty retreat from their homes, camps and caves, have left behind a mountain of suspicious items that U.S. investigators are combing for clues.

Information in some discovered documents has led to arrests, thwarted attacks and a "peeling back of the onion of al-Qaida," says one intelligence expert.

At a makeshift laboratory in Kabul, there were smelly liquids and charred papers covered with chemical formulas; in Minnesota, a computer disk about crop dusting.

In caves outside Kandahar, Arabic-language exams were found that quiz terrorists-in-training on the best way to shoot down a plane or kill a man.

The paper trail alone is like a confetti shower in a Manhattan parade. But there have also been videos, artifacts and digital records most foul.

What they all amount to is still being sorted out. Some may not qualify as much more than terrorist curios.

Attack foiled

But officials believe documents and a videotape found in Afghanistan and passed to authorities in Singapore foiled a planned terrorist attack and resulted in the breakup of an al-Qaida cell there.

Such discoveries have exposed cells in other countries, officials said. Altogether, there's a lot to sort through.

An English-language book with instructions on how to survive a nuclear explosion was found at a compound in eastern Afghanistan where one of Osama bin Laden's wives lived. An issue of Chemical Weekly addressed to a public library in Kansas City, Mo., was discovered at an al-Qaida camp.

During raids and arrests around the world, U.S.-led forces and law enforcement officers have collected gas masks, homemade videos -- some famously starring Osama bin Laden -- and American military reports on immunizing soldiers against anthrax.

On a board inside a house in Kabul, someone sketched a plane with the caption: "Your days are limited. Bang."

The materials have been shipped back to Washington for translation and sharing among the agencies, said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief.

"They've found evidence in documents of culpability for specific terrorist operations that have taken place in the past," he said, declining to be more specific. "They have found names of people in terrorist cells abroad who are in place to conduct another operation."

All this has caused a "peeling back of the onion of al-Qaida" in some parts of the world, he said.

Building a case

Some of the items at al-Qaida safe houses in Afghanistan were taken by journalists or thrown out by northern alliance troops before U.S. officials arrived. But the materials found have revealed new details about bin Laden's terrorist network -- clues that could help prosecutors build cases against suspected terrorists, or help investigators interrogate Taliban and al-Qaida members captured by the United States.

An interrogation of a detainee might stall, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, but information in a laptop or an address book in a house in Kabul might advance the case.