Tuesday, August 10, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

TERRORISM THREATS: City accused of inaction

Memos, e-mails say terrorism signs hushed up, ignored

The Excalibur is shown in video surveillance seized from the apartment of a Detroit terrorist cell six days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The Mandalay Bay and the Luxor's sphinx are shown too. THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Federal law enforcement authorities in Detroit are accusing Las Vegas officials of valuing tourism revenue over public safety by ignoring or keeping silent about signs that terrorists wanted to strike Strip casinos, a charge authorities here deny.

A year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Justice Department obtained video surveillance tapes suggesting terrorists were targeting local casinos, but authorities never alerted the public as they discussed whether a warning might hurt tourism or increase the casinos' legal liability, according to internal memos.

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Monday he was never told about the tapes uncovered in Detroit and Madrid in 2002 and had been assured by the FBI that no credible threats existed against his city.

"If I were told, I would certainly tell the public," Goodman said. "To suggest Las Vegas would withhold information about terror threats is ludicrous."

But memos and e-mails between federal prosecutors, obtained by The Associated Press, said Las Vegas authorities were alerted to some of the footage by Aug. 30, 2002. Later, local law enforcement officials were invited by a senior FBI agent to view the footage, but most spurned the invitation, the memos said.

One document quotes a federal prosecutor in Las Vegas as saying the mayor was concerned about the "deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry" if the Detroit evidence became public.

Goodman said he would like to confront the prosecutor. "I'd like to call him a liar," the mayor said. "They're making it up. If there were danger, you can bet I'd be screaming it all over the media."

One of the tapes, found in Madrid, showed possible al-Qaida European operatives casing Las Vegas casinos in 1997, engaging in casual conversation that included a possible reference to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The tape, which included footage of the MGM Grand, Excalibur and New York-New York casinos, was sent to al-Qaida's leadership to help in the selection of targets, documents showed. The Detroit tape showed the same resorts, according to The Associated Press. The Detroit tape also showed Mandalay Bay with the Luxor in the foreground, and at least one tape showed the Bellagio.

When FBI supervisory agent Paul George flew to Las Vegas in late 2002 to show the Detroit tape, "the FBI, casino representatives, Clark County Sheriff's Department and the JTTF (joint terrorism task force) declined to attend," Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Corbett wrote. "No one showed up except for two Metro officers."

"The information, unfortunately, was not taken as seriously as we believed it to have been," Detroit-based Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino said in an interview. "The reason that he (the FBI agent) was given for the low turnout was because of liability. That if they heard this information they would have to act on it. It was extraordinarily unacceptable and absolutely outrageous."

The prosecutor said he later asked a Las Vegas police officer, who had seen the tape and flown to Detroit to help, why more wasn't done. "This officer told me that the amount of money that travels through Las Vegas on a daily, weekly and monthly basis -- if something doesn't go boom, nothing is going to be done," he said.

Convertino led the successful prosecution of the Detroit terror cell but has been removed from the case amid a misconduct investigation. The prosecution team is being investigated on suspicions of withholding certain evidence from defense lawyers.

Undersheriff Doug Gillespie, second-in-command at the Metropolitan Police Department, acknowledged two detectives met with George but disputed the rest of the account.

"At no time during those meetings was the videotape discussed. We didn't even know about the videotape for months later, and no one talked to us about Las Vegas as a target," Gillespie said. "They're saying we didn't do our job, but they chose not to give us the information."

In a story in Monday's Review-Journal, Gillespie was quoted as saying Las Vegas police had never seen the Madrid videotape. But on Monday, he said he thought a reporter was referring to a second videotape found in Madrid.

Las Vegas police leaders have said they first learned of the existence of the tape found in Detroit in April 2003 from a Review-Journal account about the Detroit prosecution of the first terrorist cell detected after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Sheriff Bill Young last year blasted the Detroit offices of the FBI and the U.S. attorney for not notifying Las Vegas authorities about the footage and expected testimony that terrorists had targeted Las Vegas. "They had information that could have a detrimental impact on a community 2,500 miles away, and I don't think they cared enough to share it, and that makes me angry," the sheriff said at the time.

The tape found in Detroit, which included footage of the MGM Grand and Disneyland, was presented to jurors in Detroit as terrorists' surveillance of targets they wanted to destroy. But after viewing it, Las Vegas police dismissed it as innocuous footage resembling a vacation video and continued this week to characterize it and the Madrid tape that way.

Las Vegas has been considered a terrorist target since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks when it was determined that Mohamed Atta and his hijackers made trips here before their suicide attacks.

Still, another memo said the casinos did not want to see the footage, informing the FBI agent visiting from Detroit "they did not want to show up because of concerns about liability."

But apparently some Strip security officials had seen the tape months before agent George's arrival in Las Vegas.

MGM Mirage spokeswoman Yvette Monet said security officials from her company viewed the Detroit videotape in August 2002 at the FBI's Las Vegas field office, months before local police said they learned of the tape's existence. Images of the company's MGM Grand appeared on that tape.

Last year, representatives of the company's security team viewed what has been dubbed the Spanish tape, said Monet, noting that MGM Mirage executives were trying to determine the date of that viewing. The tape found in Spain included images of two MGM Mirage properties, the MGM Grand and New York-New York.

She rejected Convertino's claims that the casino industry attempted to limit its financial liability from a potential Strip attack by failing to view the Detroit video. "We did see these tapes, and we have been working with the federal, state and local authorities, and we continue to work with them," Monet said. "I think it's really important that we counter this perception that nobody wanted to cooperate."

The Spanish tape also includes video of Excalibur, which is operated by Mandalay Resort Group. Mandalay President and Chief Financial Officer Glenn Schaeffer said Monday he had never been told of the images of the castle-themed resort. "You're giving me information I've never heard," he said.

While Convertino criticized the failure of casino industry representatives to meet with the FBI's George to watch the video, an executive of one company offered an explanation for that decision.

Each person at the meeting could have been subpoenaed to testify at the Detroit terrorism trial, possibly forcing casino operators to release details of their security plans. "To say we blew it off, that's really a misperception," said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

FBI agents discovered the casino footage in late summer 2002, when they belatedly decoded a European surveillance tape found a year earlier in the Detroit terror cell's apartment. A few weeks later, a Justice Department expert provided prosecutors similar surveillance that Spanish authorities had recovered from an al-Qaida cell in Madrid.

In a series of e-mails, Convertino pleaded with Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Lever in Las Vegas to take the video footage seriously, though local officials were cool to it. He said two experts had concluded the tape matched other al-Qaida surveillance.

"While I understand your previously stated concerns that the Mayor of Las Vegas, the local Sheriff and others believe that our indictment may temporarily have a deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry, it is simply unconscionable that any reasonable person would assert that anyone here possessed a '(cavalier) attitude to the tape,' " Convertino wrote.

Prosecutors were allowed in spring 2003 to show the Detroit tape to jurors but were kept by their superiors from introducing the Spanish tape.

Both tapes showed the three same hotels. Excalibur "was both shot inside and out, daytime and nighttime," according to one Justice Department document.

The Detroit tape had struck the Justice Department's terror experts because it switched back and forth from scenes of Las Vegas to pre-Sept. 11 scenes of New York that included the World Trade Center and a hotel across from the twin towers.

A Justice Department expert wrote that both tapes followed the al-Qaida training manual because "surveillance is inserted into seemingly innocent tourist videos" to disguise it.

A cooperating prosecution witness in Detroit told authorities that one member of the terrorist cell described Las Vegas as the "City of Satan" and boasted "the brothers are going to destroy it."

Documents provided to U.S. authorities from Spain said the tape found in Madrid was taken by an al-Qaida operative in August 1997 and later sent by courier to al-Qaida's leaders in Afghanistan.

"This is the city of Las Vegas famous by the games and what else?" one of the Spanish operatives asked in a Spanish transcript of the tape.

"Gambling," another responded.

Later in the same conversation, one of the operatives said: "Look at the limousines. ... They are waiting for us to rent one of them. ... Let's go to the hotel since we finished filming the casinos and we made $100,000 tonight."