De-coding a plot of terror

THE CRIMINAL INGENUITY of those who conspired and carried out the catastrophic terrorist strikes against America earlier this week has baffled the international community. For the legion of the U.S. investigators, who have been trying to unravel the modern world's most `scientific' plot of terrorism, the challenges are compounded by the manner in which the actual strikes were carried out. The suicidal conspirators managed to plunge three separate state-of-the-art aircraft into their chosen targets in New York and Washington as if the hijacked planes were precision-guided missiles. Another commandeered plane crashed in the countryside of Pennsylvania. A pre-crash explosion onboard has not been ruled out by the investigators as an episodic occurrence. In a sense, the nearly-atomised wreckage, especially in the case of the collapsed twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, has complicated the task of obtaining some unalloyed forensic evidence at the site itself. Yet the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been able to make rapid progess in piecing the puzzle together. The reason can certainly be traced to the mass of intelligence that Washington's secret services had gathered over the years on some resourceful anti- America groups that command considerable financial means too. According to the FBI Director, Mr. Robert S. Mueller, the four ruined American passenger planes carried a total of 18 hijackers. A political- diplomatic interpretation of this and other aspects of the evolving investigative lead has also been made with considerable ease. The U.S. Secretary of State, Gen. Colin Powell, has therefore indicated without much hedging that Osama bin Laden, a long-suspected leader of international terror-mongers, might have masterminded these monstrous deeds as well.

Several reasons impel the U.S. investigators to quickly identify the culprits and their masters behind America's worst terrorist tragedy. The U.S. authorities are obviously keen to make amends for the conspicuous failure of the country's intelligence establishment to warn about the signs of any impending terrorist strike ahead of this week's miniaturised holocaust. To say this is not to suggest that the ongoing investigation is being fast- forwarded without caution. It is also true, no doubt, that the international community is almost as eager as the troubled Americans to know the identity of such masterly practitioners of a doctrine of hate. Yet, for the sake of international stability, it is essential that the American investigators exercise utmost care in arriving at their final conclusions.

The investigation has entered a critical phase with the recovery of the flight data recorder (`black box') in respect of the hijacked plane that crashed. Other onboard devices of investigative value are also being scouted for. What the U.S. President, Mr. George W. Bush, should go by is not merely the mandatory scientific thoroughness of the investigators. The integrity of the probe process has surely been enhanced by the fact that the U.S. is not refraining from seeking the help of those countries where the terrorists might have left a trail. The German authorities have been conspicuously collaborating with the Americans. At a different level, Washington wants Pakistan's intelligence agencies to advance the probe by rendering unqualified assistance despite Islamabad's existential dilemma about subjecting any Muslim fundamentalist group to an absolutely intense scrutiny. Above all, the political-diplomatic decision that Mr. Bush might make on the basis of a multi-faceted investigation must be infused with genuine transparency. In the end, the geopolitical implications of the American President's act of identifying the `invisible enemy' will be as important to the U.S. itself as indeed for the rest of the world. Mr. Bush has already made no secret of his intention to try and wipe out the terrorist dens of those who perpetrated the latest ``act of war'' against America.

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Section  : Opinion
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