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In addition, the white paper says "at least three" of the 19 hijackers have been identified as associates of al-Qaeda, bin Laden's organization. The document doesn't identify the three. But Bush Administration sources tell TIME that U.S. authorities have acquired evidence placing the suspected leader of the hijackings, Mohamed Atta, at al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Other evidence suggests that Atta also met with senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, a top bin Laden lieutenant.
The British white paper alleges that one hijacker--identified by the New York Times as Khalid Almihdhar of Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon--played "key roles" in both the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole. Almihdhar was one of the first hijackers to sign up for flight lessons in the U.S., in early 2000.
Blair's presentation of the British case, combined with the U.S. evidence offered to NATO, seems to have been persuasive. A NATO diplomat told TIME that "the sheer weight of information"--rather than any single piece of intelligence--left the ambassadors of all 19 NATO countries "without a shred of doubt" about al-Qaeda's complicity. And on Thursday the predominantly Islamic nation of Pakistan gave the case against bin Laden a major vote of confidence when Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Riaz Khan said the Pakistani government sees "sufficient grounds for indictment" of the Saudi exile.
All this is heartening to U.S. investigators, who have few doubts about the connection to bin Laden. "It is so obvious, based on where [the hijackers] were, who they were talking to, the places they've been and their known telephone numbers," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. But pinning down the supporting details has been a painstaking process. U.S. prosecutors haven't yet been able to charge anyone with a direct role in the attacks, and investigators now believe few if any accomplices were in the country for significant periods before Sept. 11. And they are a long way from piecing together exactly how the attacks on Sept. 11 occurred. Last week the FBI office in Boston released a time line and photos of Atta and another hijacker as they visited Portland, Maine, the night before the hijackings. Agents are eager to find out why the pair went to Portland before flying to Boston (where they boarded one of the World Trade Center missions) and whether they met with anyone there, perhaps someone who drove down from Canada.
The most promising investigative progress over the past couple of weeks has taken place overseas. From its sprawling Special Information and Operations Center in Washington, the FBI coordinates the work of its 56 domestic and more than 30 foreign offices, which have rarely been busier. About 15 German-speaking FBI agents are in Berlin and Hamburg assisting roughly 400 members of German law enforcement working the case. This close cooperation with overseas investigators has produced some of the best leads so far. For example, foreign law-enforcement agencies have given U.S. officials access to prisoners connected with al-Qaeda. Some of these inmates have identified certain hijackers as fellow trainees from bin Laden's camps.