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Also this issue: Time's Up? Don't Go Away Angry Meet the Press Bin There, Done That The Bell Curve |
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June 27-July 3, 2002
city beat
 ringing an alarm: Philadelphia police say the FBI whisked away two men near the Liberty Bell in the days following Sept. 11. The FBI says it never happened. |
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FBI says no way, but several sources claim that police, park rangers and the FBI saved the day.
On Sept. 16, five days after the devastating terrorist attack against the U.S. that killed more than 3,000 people, witnesses say something very strange occurred at the Liberty Bell.
It was in the afternoon when, according to a witness, a female tourist noticed two men she thought were Arabs sitting in a white sedan parked at Sixth Street across from the Liberty Bell. They seemed to be acting suspiciously.
She pulled two Independence Park rangers aside and said, according to a witness and a source who was privy to a security discussion, "I know I may be paranoid, but there are two men acting very strangely. They look Arab. They're in that car across the street."
The rangers sized up the situation and immediately called the FBI and the police bomb squad, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the events and a spokesman for Independence National Historical Park.
Within minutes, a black SUV with tinted windows pulled up to Sixth and Market, say the witness and sources. A group of FBI agents leaped out. They swarmed the car, pulling the two men out and bundling them into the SUV, which screeched away even before the doors closed.
For months afterward, when word of the incident leaked out, the FBI denied that they had foiled any terrorist plot against the Liberty Bell in the days following Sept. 11 and denied that they had arrested anyone at all. FBI spokeswoman Linda Vizi on Tuesday afternoon vociferously denied any such event took place.
"The FBI did not charge anyone with anything," said Vizi. "There is nobody charged with any terroristic threats to blow up the Liberty Bell. We did not arrest anyone."
Efforts to describe the situation -- that park rangers detained two men who were whisked away by the FBI -- were rebuked by Vizi, who continued speaking as a reporter attempted to outline the events. "Listen to me," she said, her voice getting louder and angrier. "You are off-base. Your sources are wrong. It didn't happen."
Despite Vizi's comments, two men were detained by the FBI.
After Vizi's denial, calls to Independence National Historical Park and the Philadelphia Police Department confirmed that two men were apprehended by Philadelphia Police and park rangers on Sept. 16 and turned over to the FBI.
"It started with a complaint from someone who saw a white Chevy Caprice driving erratically," says Phil Sheridan, Independence Park spokesman. Park rangers, says Sheridan, followed up on that report, found the two men in a car parked on Sixth Street across from the Liberty Bell, and asked the men for their IDs.
"The two guys had more than one identification [each]," says Sheridan. "They also apparently claimed that they were doing something with the FBI and were going to meet them. So our folks called the FBI and turned them over to the FBI."
Sheridan, who says he has no knowledge of what happened with the men after the FBI took them away, adds that the police department's bomb squad "did a bomb sweep on the car." Sheridan says that no bombs were found and that that was the end of the matter, as far as the Park Service is concerned.
Police spokeswoman Maria Ibrahim says that at 12:46 p.m. that day, Philadelphia Police and park security "detained two Middle Eastern men along with a white Chevy bearing New Jersey temp tags. The FBI were called to the location and took both men in for invesigation." The FBI, says Ibraham, "gave no more info" about the detainees.
After being confronted with the information provided by Sheridan and Ibrahim, Vizi left a message Wednesday morning repeating her semantic assertion.
"I will tell you once again, there was nobody under arrest by the FBI on September 16 for a plot to blow up the Liberty Bell," she said.
One high-ranking federal source says that the men taken into custody on Sept. 16 in Philadelphia had ties to al-Qaeda and to Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Two sources claim both of the men apprehended are still in federal custody. One source claims the men were being held in the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia as recently as early May.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has a policy of refusing to comment on any of the people it is holding in custody since Sept. 11.
Four sources claim that the apprehension of these two alleged terrorists foiled a plot against the Liberty Bell. But that hasn't made the National Park Service, which is responsible for running Independence Mall, any calmer about security around the Bell.
Sources claim that Independence National Historical Park is always on a higher state of alert than most of the rest of the country. There are daily security briefings for all employees and contingency evacuation routes and emergency plans in effect for any terrorist attack. Every day, undercover agents mingle with the tourists while park police scour the area for suspicious packages left on or under benches or inside the colonial buildings.
Park officials are working overtime to prepare for the Fourth of July, when Secretary of State Colin Powell will be at Independence Mall and the USS Cole, which terrorists bombed in Yemen in October 2000, will be tied up along Penn's Landing on the Delaware River in a heretofore unannounced visit.
