Salon.com > Ted Rose

The invisible man

Mon, 12 Feb 2001 18:40:00 +0000

Want to listen to a terrorist talk shop in your own back yard? If you're in New York, hop on the 4 train, get off at City Hall and make your way into the federal courthouse at 40 Centre Street.

For much of the next year, downtown Manhattan will be ground zero for America's latest salvo in its low-grade war against alleged terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi exile presumed to be camped somewhere inside Afghanistan, under the protection of the Taliban.

After a three-year, multimillion-dollar investigation, the federal government opened its case last week against four Bin Laden associates, accusing them of criminal acts in connection with the bombing of two American embassies in East Africa on Aug. 7, 1998. That morning 224 people died and thousands were wounded in almost-simultaneous car bomb attacks in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

On Tuesday, inside Room 318 of the Federal District Courthouse, a Sudanese man with a light beard and a skullcap named Jamel Ahmed Al-Fadl spent the day recalling his former life as an Islamic warrior with Osama Bin Laden. Al-Fadl's English was poor and he spoke in nervous bursts, but sometimes his words were devastatingly clear. At one point, prosecutors mentioned the U.S. military involvement in Somalia in 1993 and asked Al-Fadl to tell jurors Bin Laden's take on it. "The snake is America," he recalled Bin Laden saying. "We have to cut their head and stop them. Right here, in the horn of Africa.'"

Ironic twist

Fri, 14 Jul 2000 18:00:00 +0000

While President Clinton took a break from his legacy-building efforts at Camp David to sign a historic trade deal with Vietnam, the former spokesman of vanquished presidential accuser Ken Starr sat as a defendant in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Charles Bakaly III, Starr's former spokesman and senior counsel to the independent counsel, faces a contempt-of-court charge for allegedly submitting a false declaration to a federal judge investigating leaks in Starr's office. If prosecutors succeed in their case against Bakaly (who once wrote to Salon to complain about investigative reporter Murray Waas' efforts to obtain sources within his office), he will become the first federal convict to emerge from the Monica Lewinsky case.

In an ironic twist, Bakaly, a longtime Republican Washington insider, faces a prosecution that is relying on tortured logic similar to that which Starr employed against Clinton: He's not on trial for allegations that he leaked information; he stands accused of lying about being the source of the leak.

McCain's own Mozart

Thu, 24 Feb 2000 17:00:00 +0000

The Straight Talk Express, which served href="/politics2000/directory/candidates/john_mccai
n/index.html">Sen. John McCain so well in the early
primary states, wont do him much good anymore. McCain has less than two
weeks to pitch his campaign to voters across the country, in
delegate-rich and geographically expansive states such as California and New
York. If you happen to live in a state with an upcoming primary, theres a
slim chance that youll see McCains cruiser coming down your street. But
theres a good chance youll see a McCain advertisement like "Courage" on
your television set.

"Courage" is one of those gauzy ads that presents McCain in the soft,
sentimental light that has helped his insurgent candidacy flourish. But when
I first saw "Courage," at a Virginia post-production house a couple of weeks
ago, it was lifeless. The images and the words were there, but the emotion
was missing. That's because Todd Hahn, a man most voters have never heard of,
hadn't gotten his hands on "Courage" yet.

Turtlegate

Fri, 21 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

When environmental activist Gary Appelson logged onto eBay and typed in the words "tortoise shell" at the search prompt earlier this month, he was shocked by what he found. More than 50 auctions were listed -- featuring sea turtle shell hair ornaments, glasses, cases and even a guitar pick -- and most of them were illegal.

After making the discovery, Appelson -- who works for the Caribbean Conservation Corp. in Gainesville, Fla., -- contacted eBay and Bob Snow, a special agent with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife office near San Francisco.

"Quite frankly, we weren't aware of the volume of turtle products," says Snow, who is one of the two agents responsible for investigating wildlife smuggling in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the past year, Snow has spent an increasing amount of his time at work surfing eBay, identifying or investigating roughly 300 auctions involving items prohibited by the Endangered Species Act.

Small as that figure may seem, Snow sees evidence that the problem is growing: a leopard skin here, a black rhino foot there.