LV officials dispute they were alerted to threat

Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2004 | 11:09 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and officials for Metro Police are denying an Associated Press report that local authorities knew about videotapes suggesting terrorists were targeting Las Vegas but decided not to release the information.

"It's a bunch of hooey, a bunch of nonsense," Goodman said Monday afternoon. "Nobody has ever shown me any credible evidence of an attack on Las Vegas."

A year after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Justice Department obtained videotapes showing images of Las Vegas casinos, but authorities never alerted the public as they discussed whether a warning might hurt tourism or increase the casinos' legal liability, internal memos show, according to the Associated Press report.

Memos and e-mails from federal prosecutors, obtained by the Associated Press, say Las Vegas authorities were alerted to some of the footage uncovered on tapes in Detroit and Spain by Aug. 30, 2002. Later, numerous local law enforcement officials were invited by a senior FBI agent to view the footage, but most spurned the invitation, the memos say.

One document quotes a federal prosecutor in Las Vegas as saying the mayor was concerned about the "deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry" if the Detroit evidence became public. Another memo states the casinos didn't want to see the footage for fear it would make them more likely to be held liable in civil court if an attack occurred.

Metro Police Undersheriff Doug Gillespie said that Metro officials did not become aware of the Detroit tape until April 2003, when it became public as part of the successful prosecution of a Detroit terrorist cell.

"I don't agree with the account that has been given," Gillespie said. "We found out about the Detroit tape when everyone else did at the trial, and we found out about the Spanish tape shortly after that."

Las Vegas FBI spokesman Special Agent Dave Nanz said that FBI and Metro officials reviewed both the tapes by May 2003, about a month after the Detroit tape surfaced in the terrorism trial.

Nanz said he could not comment further citing the gag order imposed by the judge in the Detroit case.

One of the tapes, found in Spain, appears to show al-Qaida's European operatives casing Las Vegas casinos in 1997, engaging in casual conversation that included an apparent reference to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the Sept. 11, 2001, mastermind. The tape was sent to al-Qaida's leadership to help in the selection of targets, documents show, according to the Associated Press.

The documents state the two tapes include footage of the MGM Grand, Excalibur and New York-New York -- three hotels at the intersection of Tropicana Avenue and the Las Vegas Strip with a combined total of 11,000 rooms.

"The information, unfortunately, was not taken as seriously as we believed it to have been," Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino told the AP in an interview, recounting how only two local Metro officers took up the FBI agent's offer to see the tape.

Convertino led the successful prosecution of the Detroit terror cell but has since been removed from the case amid an investigation into whether the prosecution team withheld certain evidence from defense lawyers. Convertino alleges the probe is retaliation for his recent cooperation with Congress.

Goodman said that he called Convertino's office Monday looking for answers, but his call wasn't returned.

"I called and someone answered, 'Organized Crime Task Force,' and I was really scared," Goodman quipped. "He (Convertino) is under suspicion of prosecutorial misconduct and may lose the convictions he got in the case."

In late summer 2002 FBI agents discovered the casino footage when they belatedly decoded a European surveillance tape found a year earlier in the Detroit terror cell's apartment. A few weeks later a Justice Department expert provided prosecutors similar surveillance that Spanish authorities had recovered from an al-Qaida cell in Madrid.

When FBI supervisory agent Paul George flew to Las Vegas to show the Detroit tape, "the FBI, casino representatives, Clark County Sheriff's Department and the JTTF (joint terrorism task force) declined to attend," Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Corbett wrote.

"No one showed up except for two Metro officers," Corbett added. "Indeed, the casinos informed Agent George that they did not want to show up because of concerns about liability."

Convertino said he later asked a Las Vegas police officer, who had seen the tape and flown to Detroit to help, why more wasn't done. "This officer told me that the amount of money that travels through Las Vegas on a daily, weekly and monthly basis -- if something doesn't go boom, nothing is going to be done," he said.

Gillespie said that two Metro detectives with the Joint Terrorism Task Force did meet with George, but said videotape surveillance taken inside and outside of Las Vegas casinos was not discussed or shown to the officers.

"No mention was made of any videotape," Gillespie said. "It's my understanding that he (George) was here in preparation for the Detroit trial."

Gillespie said that George asked the detectives about the hijackers that were known to have been in Las Vegas prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.

"They're saying we didn't do our job, and it is to the contrary. They had the information. They chose not to give it to us," Gillespie said of federal authorities.

Las Vegas has been considered a terror target since shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, when it was determined that Mohammed Atta and his hijackers made trips there before their suicide attacks. But the extent of video surveillance hasn't received attention.

A top executive with the company that owns the Excalibur, one of the casinos in the videos, said Monday he had never been told. "You're giving me information I've never heard," said Glenn Schaeffer, president and chief financial officer of Mandalay Resort Group.

Yvette Monet, a spokeswoman for MGM Grand owner MGM MIRAGE, said that security officials with the gaming company did see the Detroit tape in August 2002 at the local FBI office. She said they declined to look at it with George later that summer because they had already seen it.

"We have always cooperated with state, local and federal authorities in dealing with these matters and we continue to do so today," Monet said.

Homeland Security officials said Monday there is no imminent threat known to Las Vegas, although it remains a suspected target. They said the 2002 episode showed the need for the instant local alert system the department created last year.

Knowledge of the tapes reached the highest levels of the Justice Department. The department's terrorism chief, Barry Sabin, referenced the casino footage in a memo to the FBI.

In a series of e-mails obtained by the Associated Press, Convertino pleaded with Assistant U.S. Attorney Sharon Lever in Las Vegas to take the video footage seriously, even though local officials were allegedly cool to it. He noted two experts had concluded the tape matched other al-Qaida surveillance.

"While I understand your previously stated concerns that the mayor of Las Vegas, the local sheriff and others believe our indictment may temporarily have a deleterious effect on the Las Vegas tourism industry, it is unconscionable that any reasonable person would assert that anyone here possessed a cavalier attitude toward the tape," Convertino wrote.

Lever and a spokeswoman for the Nevada U.S. Attorney's Office said they could not comment because of the gag order.

Gillespie said that Metro Police take all threats to Las Vegas seriously.

"I think Sheriff (Bill) Young's reaction when he first found out about the Detroit tape in 2003 shows his commitment," Gillespie said of the sheriff's anger over not having been told by federal officials in Detroit about the tape. "Sheriff Keller made homeland security a priority and we've continued that. We've worked very diligently to develop a cooperative relationship with all our federal and local partners."

Goodman said he has seen neither of the tapes.

"I work with Sheriff Young and Ellen Knowlton (special agent in charge of the Las Vegas office of the FBI) every day, and they tell me if there is a threat," Goodman said. "If there is a threat you better believe I'll tell the public.

"I think Las Vegas is the safest place in the world, and people should come to Las Vegas until we say different."

Prosecutors were allowed in spring 2003 to show the Detroit tape to jurors, but were kept by their superiors from introducing the Spanish tape.

Both tapes showed the three same hotels. The Excalibur, in fact, "was both shot inside and out, daytime and nighttime," according to one Justice document.

The Detroit tape interested Justice's terror experts because it switched back and forth from scenes of Las Vegas to pre-Sept. 11 scenes of New York that included the World Trade Center and a hotel across from the twin towers.

A Justice expert wrote that both tapes followed the al-Qaida training manual because "surveillance is inserted into seemingly innocent tourist videos" to disguise it.

A cooperating prosecution witness in Detroit told authorities that one member of the alleged terror cell described Las Vegas as the "City of Satan" and boasted "the brothers are going to destroy it."

Documents provided to U.S. authorities from Spain say the tape found in Madrid was taken by an al-Qaida operative in August 1997 and later sent via courier to al-Qaida's leaders in Afghanistan.

"This is the city of Las Vegas famous by the games and what else?" one of the Spanish operatives asks in a Spanish transcript of the tape.

"Gambling," another responded.

Later in the same conversation, one of the operatives states: "Look at the limousines. ... They are waiting for us to rent one of them. ... Let's go to the hotel since we finished filming the casinos and we made $100,000 tonight."

Sun reporter Jace Radke and Associated Press writers John Solomon in Washington and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this story.

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