Sifting For Answers

By Johanna McGeary

You never hear about people like Sheila Horan until something truly terrible happens. But after more than two decades in the FBI's secretive national-security division, she knows her way around terrorism. And now she has been thrust into one of the most difficult manhunts in her career, as on-the-scene boss of the investigation in East Africa that the U.S. hopes will one day nail down the names and addresses of the terrorists who ruthlessly massacred 257 innocents and wounded more than 5,000 in the twin bombings of the U.S. embassies.

Agent Horan found herself in Nairobi last week presiding over a makeshift command center in the partly wrecked railway station bus park across from the embassy. Her task: to supervise 215 FBI agents in both capitals, along with explosives experts from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, as they sort through concrete rubble, twisted metal, bits of glass--every scrap of debris that could yield the vital physical evidence that might identify who was responsible for the senseless violence.

It could take weeks before investigators confirm the most basic facts. After nearly seven days of digging, Horan was able to announce one tiny step forward: pieces of the vehicle that carried the Nairobi bomb had been found. The first planeloads of material evidence were sent to Washington for analysis over the weekend. Investigators expect to spend an additional four weeks conducting at least 700 interviews in Kenya, while Horan's deputy leads other agents through a similar process in Tanzania.

Already speculation is focusing on one man who is thought likely to be behind the bombings: Osama bin Laden, a militant Muslim multimillionaire. Bin Laden's outspoken screeds against America and suspected involvement in many of the most spectacular terrorist assaults of the '90s have earned him the reputation of a virtual Dr. No whose tentacles extend to almost every secret cell around the globe. Though he has denied responsibility for some of the attacks, bin Laden is still widely considered the world's prime villain after the legendary terrorist Carlos the Jackal; the State Department last year labeled bin Laden "one of the most significant sponsors of Sunni Islamic terrorist groups." He seeks to overthrow the Saudi royal family and drive U.S. forces out of Saudi Arabia, away from its holy cities, Mecca and Medina. Bin Laden is nearly everyone's favorite suspect this time too--largely because he is the obvious one. Newsday reported on Sunday that a relatively low-level associate of bin Laden may have been identified by an embassy guard as having been in the truck carrying the bomb in Nairobi. Clinton aides are looking at contingency plans for covert operations to capture bin Laden from his reputed high-tech lair deep inside Afghanistan.

Over the weekend, FBI agents were flying to Pakistan to interview one Mohammed Sadique, 32, who, according to a Pakistani newspaper, was detained at the Karachi airport on Aug. 7 because his passport appeared faked. Sadique then reportedly admitted involvement in the plot and attempting to link up in Afghanistan with two other returning co-conspirators. The scheme, said the paper, had received help from people sympathetic to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, a group reportedly financed by bin Laden and linked to the assassins of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. U.S. investigators are taking the allegations seriously but, says one senior American official, there are "no guarantees" that Sadique's claims are true. Only when the Pakistani and Egyptian leads are run to ground, when the composition of the bombs is known, when the delivery vehicles have been precisely identified, can the U.S. know where to lay the blame.

Without such evidence, no matter how much investigators might believe in bin Laden's guilt, the U.S. would have no way to bring him to justice. "We don't have enough to stand up in front of the American people and say he or his henchmen have done it," says a U.S. official. "Whether we ever have enough that withstands the test of law to take them to trial, that's a different question."

Which is what makes the long, exhaustive work of the FBI so crucial. Other countries, like Israel, do not always insist on legal niceties before they send out secret hit teams to execute an alleged terrorist or dispatch jet squadrons to bomb countries they think encouraged suspects. But the U.S. does not operate that way, barred by law from covert assassinations and restrained by moral standards and global opinion. The only way the perpetrators of the East African bombings will be "brought to justice," as President Clinton has promised, is by the laws of arrest, trial and conviction.

The process starts with the evidence Horan's teams are collecting from the crime scenes. It was a fingernail-size shard of circuit board for a timing device that ultimately led the U.S. to charge that two Libyans blew up Pan Am 103 in 1988. Last week dozens of U.S. agents swarmed over the bomb sites in East Africa, sifting through every tiny fragment of the debris, from which Washington will reconstruct the location, direction and force of the explosions. They were looking for chemical residues, the telltale traces of the bombs' components and one of the first, easiest clues to identify.

The searchers were most interested in ferreting out the vehicles that ferried in the bombs. Investigators sorted all the bits of metal, some no bigger than the palm of a hand, trying to find parts that carry the vehicle's unique identification number, the first step in tracing a driver.

Other FBI agents are interviewing hundreds of people who could help put a human face on the attacks. In Nairobi dozens of eyewitnesses and survivors have told their tales, but every one of the accounts differs on important points of detail. It was a lone bomber; there were three; there were four or five. It was a light pickup; it was a three-ton truck. It bore diplomatic license plates; it had no license plates. The FBI is sorting through all these conflicting stories, feeding them into its state-of-the-art Rapid Start mobile computer system, which can discern similarities in the accounts or subtle patterns of association among seemingly unconnected characters, places or events.

So far, though, investigators have pieced together only a general idea of what happened at 10:35 that Friday morning in Nairobi. The most intriguing information has come from Kenyan guards who work for the private, California-based United International Investigative Services, hired to provide security in the perimeter areas of the embassy. Benson Okuku Bwaku, a 33-year-old manning the outer barrier at the building's rear entrance, has told the FBI and a number of newspapers how he encountered one of the bombers face to face.

Bwaku was checking vehicles as they approached the metal bar that blocked entry to the back parking lot and the gated ramp down into the embassy's underground garage. Suddenly a truck he identified as a 3.5-ton Mitsubishi Canter sped into the access road leading to the barrier, only to be halted by a car exiting from the other direction. Suspicious, said Bwaku, of the truck's "terrible speed," he lowered the barrier. A man in a plaid shirt and baggy pants jumped out from the passenger side and marched toward him. "Open the gate," he demanded, and when Bwaku, armed only with a wooden club and walkie-talkie, hesitated, the man plunged both hands into his deep pockets and pulled out what Bwaku recognized as a grenade in his left hand and several small devices with dangling wires in his right.

As the man threw the grenade at Bwaku, the guard ducked, then heard a sharp explosion behind him. He fled around the side of the embassy, shouting into his walkie-talkie: "Base! Base! Terrorism! Terrorism!" But nobody heard him on the busy channel. Back at the gates, guard Joash Okindo managed to lock the heavy steel doors over the ramp to the embassy garage as the attacker hurled another grenade in his direction. Nanoseconds later, Bwaku heard the ferocious explosion of a bomb that knocked him off his feet but left him miraculously alive. Later, Bwaku's American boss at United International confirmed that another guard had seen a similar truck first try to get through the front gate of the embassy.

During two days of questioning, Bwaku told the FBI he saw the attacker long enough to describe him in detail: a shortish man, neither black nor white, with burning eyes, a long nose, straight black hair and a mustache. FBI artists have sketched the face and will now try to find other witnesses who might have seen the same likeness.

The investigation is even less far along in Dar es Salaam, where the FBI and Tanzanian authorities have reconstructed only the vaguest outline of the attack. The solid, three-story, white stone embassy, originally housing the Israeli mission and taken over by the U.S. in 1980, is surrounded by a 100-ft. stone and steel perimeter fence, approached through two gates. A team of local guards from a private firm called Ultimate Security Ltd. patrolled the entry from the first perimeter gate to the Marine post in the embassy door, as well as the parking areas inside and outside the compound. They were backed up by a surveillance camera that swept the area and was monitored on TV screens inside by Marines but was not recording anything permanently.

At just about 10:30 a.m. the customary delivery was being made by the embassy's water truck. Driver Joseph Shamte, a trusted embassy employee, stopped at the first set of gates, where the guards began their routine check underneath the vehicle. Without warning, a massive explosion engulfed the truck and blew it 50 ft. over the fence, separating the water tank from the chassis and incinerating the cab and Shamte. Five security guards died instantly, along with four others. Missing, though, was Saidi Rogati, the "truck boy" who normally accompanied Shamte and who had worked for the embassy for 13 years. Investigators do not know yet if his is the lone unidentified body or if he never accompanied Shamte on the fatal delivery.

But the bomb was not, as some reported, on that water truck. It detonated somewhere behind the truck, leaving a crater 9 ft. wide and 4 ft. deep. Metal bits, perhaps from the mystery carrier but also from two dozen cars near the embassy, were scattered widely. A witness told the FBI she saw a man with a small black device, like a remote control for a detonator, climb out of a car near the embassy and look repeatedly at his watch. Evidence to date suggests the bomb may have been in a light truck parked behind the water carrier.

Finding the culprits, acknowledged Donald Kerr, the FBI's laboratory chief, "is going to be arduous." Luck can play the defining role: even after the FBI knew how the Oklahoma City bombing occurred, they might never have found out who did it if Timothy McVeigh hadn't made the stupid error of driving without a license plate.

Then comes the hardest part of all: bringing the terrorists to justice. Although the U.S. claims the legal right to try anyone for the murder of an American citizen abroad, prosecutors first have to get their hands on the suspect, and that has proved a major stumbling block even in cases where miscreants are firmly identified. Libya has refused to extradite the accused bombers of Pan Am 103; Saudi Arabia insists on investigating, trying and punishing suspects, like the four men beheaded for blowing up a U.S. training center in Riyadh in 1995, without ever letting the FBI interrogate them. This time at least, both Kenya and Tanzania are working hand in hand with the U.S.

For now, Washington can only showcase its resolve through the perseverance of its investigation and the confidence of those in charge of it. When Clinton asked him if the FBI would be successful, Thomas Pickard, assistant director in charge of the criminal investigative division, said, "I told him, 'Yes, sir!'" U.S. citizens at home and abroad--and even more, the Kenyans caught so senselessly in the crossfire from America's secret enemies--can only pray he's eventually right.

--Reported by Peter Hawthorne/Dar es Salaam, Scott MacLeod/Paris, Clive Mutiso/Nairobi and Elaine Shannon and Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Dar es Salaam, Scott MacLeod/Paris, Clive Mutiso/Nairobi and Elaine Shannon and Douglas Waller/Washington