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caption: In "Chasing the Sleeper Cell," airing Thursday, October 16, at 9 P.M. on PBS, FRONTLINE examines how efforts to prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil have prompted serious questions about the effectiveness of the CIA and the FBI, seen here in a raid of a suspected Al Qaeda cell in America. Image may only be used in editorial conjunction with the direct promotion of this film in North America. No other rights are granted. All rights reserved. Photo credit: © Reuters NewMedia Inc./Corbis

Thursday, October 16, at 9pm, 60 minutes

"In the past 24 hours, federal authorities have identified, investigated and disrupted an Al Qaeda-trained terrorist cell on American soil," Deputy Assistant Attorney General Larry Thompson announced on September 14, 2002. It was a sobering announcement that sent shockwaves through America.

They were dubbed "The Lackawanna Six." Six American citizens accused of aiding Al Qaeda and having personally met with Osama bin Laden. President Bush hailed their arrest as a significant victory in the war on terror in his State of the Union address in January 2003. "We've broken Al Qaeda cells in Hamburg and Milan and Madrid and London and Paris--as well as Buffalo, New York," the president said.

But were these Americans really an Al Qaeda "sleeper cell" ready to strike at bin Laden's command? Or were they, as one alleged terrorist claims, merely unwitting pawns whose desire to become more deeply immersed in Islam landed them in the wrong place at the wrong time?

FRONTLINE® and The New York Times join forces to go deep inside the war on terror at home in "Chasing the Sleeper Cell," airing Thursday, October 16, at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings). With remarkable access to top government officials and counterterrorism investigators--and featuring an exclusive interview with a member of the alleged terrorist cell--the report takes viewers inside a secret national security investigation to witness how America's intelligence agencies pursued an alleged Al Qaeda cell operating in the United States.

"For the first time, both the counterterrorism cops and their quarry talk on the record and on camera about a case that the U.S. government says was the most important and decisive blow against Al Qaeda here at home since 9/11," says Lowell Bergman, who, with Matthew Purdy, reports the story for both FRONTLINE and The New York Times. "But many in the intelligence community disagree. They say the way this case was handled is a prime example of why the FBI is not up to the job and that we need a new domestic counterintelligence and counterespionage agency."

For residents of Lackawanna, New York, population 19,000, the news that a handful of their neighbors had been accused of being Al Qaeda operatives was a shock.

"Right here in our neighborhood we have terrorists--that was the perceived notion amongst the community," recalls Lackawanna Police Chief Dennis O'Hara. "Shock and probably fear. What were they up to? What were they gonna do?"

Even members of Lackawanna's 3,000-strong Yemeni community were surprised to learn that the six young men--friends who had grown up and attended school in the small city just south of Buffalo--spent the spring and summer of 2001 at an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.

"We were led to believe that these kids were going on a religious trip to Pakistan," says Mohammed Albanna, a spokesman for the Lackawanna Muslim community. "Even when they came back, they told the families that's where they went."

In Spring 2001, however, FBI officials say they had no intelligence that would indicate U.S. citizens were attending Al Qaeda terrorist camps. Part of the problem, some officials say, was the lack of resources then being devoted to terrorism.

"Everybody wanted to talk tough about terrorism, but when you came right down to it the political will was not there," says Dale Watson, the FBI's top counterterrorism cop until late 2002. "We were very, very concerned about the [terrorist training] camps. The basic question of the camps was who's graduating from those camps and where are they going? Did they come back to the United States?"

In the summer of 2001, just months before September 11, an anonymous letter from Lackawanna's Yemeni Community arrived at the FBI's Buffalo office. The letter claimed that a group of Lackawanna residents had traveled to Afghanistan to "meet bin Laden" and train in his camps. Yet after interviewing Sahim Alwan--the first of the group to return from Afghanistan--FBI officials found themselves stymied. Alwan continued to insist that the group had been on a religious trip to Pakistan and with no other evidence with which to refute his story, the FBI's investigation was effectively at a standstill--a fact that has since prompted much criticism from other law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Watson, the former counterterrorism agent, staunchly defends the FBI's actions. The fact that the suspects in question were American citizens who could not be deported, he says, complicated the FBI's investigation.

"We just couldn't round up individuals because someone sent an anonymous letter that says, 'A, B, and C are doing something illegal and are terrorists,'" Watson says. "That would give us cause to take a closer look at them. But you had to have probable cause to arrest somebody in this country."

The rules of the game changed, however, after September 11. Suddenly terrorism and Al Qaeda sleeper cells were priority number one, and the Lackawanna group began to draw the attention of people in very high places.

"There were discussions about what these people were doing," says Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge. "I know the president asked questions about that. What are the leads? Where they've been. Have we found any sources to corroborate it? What's their legal status?"

That high-level concern became even more pronounced when U.S. forces captured a Jihadi warrior named Jumma Al-Dosari as he was fleeing Afghanistan following the war with the Taliban. During his interrogation, Al-Dosari revealed that he had lived in Lackawanna with one of the suspected cell members before leaving the country two weeks after September 11 in order to fight alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. He also confirmed that, contrary to Sahim Alwan's assertions, the group had indeed attended an Al Qaeda training camp.

"It was a concern that we could possibly have something here," says Peter Ahearn, special agent in charge of the FBI's operations in Buffalo and Western New York. "A very active cell planning to do something in the United States--that's your worst nightmare."

Intelligence experts criticized the FBI for becoming too focused on finding an actual crime with which to charge the Lackawanna suspects instead of attempting to infiltrate the cell in order to gain valuable information about Al Qaeda's operations.

"The Bureau has done it in the past," says John MacGaffin, a thirty-year veteran of the CIA. "It does not do it now as well because it approaches [investigations] in a law enforcement, criminal conviction mentality. And that's unfortunate, because we're taking a chance. We're taking a chance because we're not going down the road that's likely to get us inside the innermost councils of those who would wish us harm."

Some FBI officials contend, however, that it was the CIA's misinterpretation of one suspect's emails--and its failure to thoroughly vet the information--that led Washington to believe the Lackawanna suspects were a far greater threat than they actually were. In "Chasing the Sleeper Cell," FRONTLINE and The New York Times speak with FBI and local law enforcement officials who say their investigations into the Lackawanna group found no evidence that the men were plotting an attack.

"We did not develop something here that was a direct threat, that there was a plot," Ahearn says. "There were some indications that would make you a little concerned. Then, we would vet that out and say, 'Well, that is not something we are concerned about.'"

Lackawanna Police Chief Dennis O'Hara agrees. "Were they a sleeper cell?" he asks. "If they were, they were deep asleep."

"Chasing the Sleeper Cell" is a FRONTLINE co-production with The New York Times. The writers and producers are David Rummel and Lowell Bergman. The correspondent is Lowell Bergman. The reporters for The New York Times are Matthew Purdy and Lowell Bergman. The director is David Rummel.

The executive in charge for The New York Times is Michael Oreskes. The director of television programming is Lawrie Mifflin. The vice president of program production is Ann Derry. The president of New York Times Television is Bill Abrams.

FRONTLINE is produced by WGBH Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS.

Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers. Additional support is provided by U.S. News & World Report.

Additional funding for "Chasing the Sleeper Cell" is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

FRONTLINE is closed-captioned for deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation.

The executive producer for FRONTLINE is David Fanning.

FRONTLINE XXII/October 2003