Monday, June 24, 2002 | 11:29 a.m.
The Henderson man whose story of an intercepted cell phone message describing a terrorist threat to Las Vegas was dismissed by the FBI said he would still report anything suspicious in the future, despite public criticism.
The alleged threat focused on the upcoming July 4th holiday in Las Vegas.
"The bottom line is I did what I thought was right and had to be done," Michael Hamdan, 54, said Sunday.
Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman ripped Hamdan over the weekend, calling him a "liar" for the report that gained international attention two weeks before the holiday.
On Friday Goodman told a television reporter that in his former life -- as a criminal defense lawyer representing organized crime figures -- he would have "whacked" Hamdan.
On Saturday Goodman told a reporter he'd never been so mad in his life and wanted to put his hands around Hamdan's neck and squeeze.
This morning Goodman admitted he was a "little emotional" when he made those statements. But he said the city has had a difficult time rebounding economically from the events of Sept. 11 and Hamdan's comments may have scared away tourists.
"I understand he's angry," Hamdan said. "I am upset, too, over what I heard."
The FBI took Hamdan's report seriously, FBI spokesman Daron Borst of the Las Vegas field office said, even though the report was ultimately found not to be credible after a polygraph test.
"We have had scores of similar allegations, most are debunked immediately," Borst said. "It is rare that the investigation is conducted in a public eye, and it's even rarer that the individual goes to the press first without allowing the investigative process to run its course."
Hamdan described how on June 15 he overheard less than two minutes of a conversation in Arabic that discussed a plot to allegedly "hit" Las Vegas "on the day of freedom." He had dialed his wife on his cell phone and heard the conversation before the call to his wife connected.
"What are the odds among all the people driving along the Strip with cell phones in hand who would hear it?" he asked. "I understand Arabic. I heard the language and reported it."
The FBI questioned him for almost five hours Friday and gave him a polygraph test, Hamdan said. FBI agents asked him a total of eight questions while he was attached to the lie detector, he said.
Hamdan said he didn't sleep for 48 hours before meeting with the FBI.
"I volunteered to take the polygraph. They never told me I failed or anything," Hamdan said. "We went through a lot of things, a lot of details about many things."
Hamdan said FBI agents told him that no charges of filing a false complaint would be filed against him. Borst confirmed that currently no federal charges are pending against Hamdan.
Hamdan said the FBI asked if he heard or saw anything in the future if he would report it. "You bet your life I will. God forbid, if something happened, how would I live with that?"
Hamdan's report also drew the praise of Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., on Friday, before the results of the polygraph were known.
"First, I would like to thank Mr. Michael Hamdan for reporting the phone conversation he overheard," Gibbons, a member of the congressional Joint Intelligence Committee, said. "I commend Mr. Hamdan for his vigilance."
Gibbons, a veteran of both the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, said U.S. intelligence agents receive "vague and disjointed" information every day. "Some of this information proves to be helpful in thwarting terrorist activity," he said. "Other times, the information proves to be meaningless."
Hamdan said he knows he did the right thing.
"My reward is, if there is any people planning or plotting to harm Las Vegas or anywhere in our country, now they know that we know," Hamdan said.
Sun reporters Keith Paul and Diana Sahagun contributed to this report.
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