In responding to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, America has entered into a new type of war, one fought in the shadows.
美國在對紐約和華盛頓遭受恐怖襲擊作出反應之時,便進入了一種新型的戰爭,一種在暗中進行的戰爭。
Journey into the Shadows
Mark Hosenball, Michael Hirsh and Ron Moreau
1 It was the usual transatlantic flight: nine hours of fidgeting to get the pillow right, first-run movies flickering mutely on small screens, an indigestible flow of starchy food and drinks. Bound for Chicago from Zurich on the morning of May 8, the passengers of Swiss International Air Lines Flight 8 saw nothing amiss. Certainly they didn't know they were on the front lines of a global war being waged under their drooping eyes. But the crew knew it.
走向隱密
馬克·霍森鮑爾 邁克爾·赫什 羅恩·莫羅
那是一次尋常的飛越大西洋的航班:整整9個小時頭不停地在靠墊上移來移去,想枕得舒服些,小屏幕上首輪影片的無聲鏡頭抖動著,多得無法消化的淀粉食物及飲料。5月8日上午,在從蘇黎世飛往芝加哥的客機上,乘坐瑞士國際航空公司第8次航班的乘客沒有絲毫異樣感覺。當然,他們不知道,就在睡眼惺忪之際,自己竟處在了一場正在進行的全球戰爭的第一線。然而,機組人員是知道的。
2 They had been warned that a major terrorist suspect was scheduled to fly on the plane. And a scattering of very wakeful men in nearby seats knew it: a small squad of FBI agents and a separate team of Swiss Special Forces commandos, all carefully positioned around the suspect, all warily watching his every move. For nine hours.
他們接到警報,一個重要的恐怖分子嫌犯預定乘坐這架班機。散坐在近旁座位上那些高度警覺的人是知道的:那是一小隊聯邦調查局的特工人員和另一隊瑞士特別部隊的突擊隊員,他們被精心安排在嫌犯四周,密切監視其一舉一動。整整9個小時。
3 (1) This airborne stakeout was directed at one Jose Padilla, otherwise known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, a Brooklyn-born street thug now identified by investigators as a would-be Qaeda terrorist. After moving mysteriously for a month from Karachi to Zurich to Cairo and back to Zurich -- the kind of city-hopping we've come to associate with a Qaeda plot -- Padilla was headed back to his homeland to cause havoc, or possibly just scout out a good target, U.S. authorities believe. Padilla was one of the band of foreign terrorists who, as the Taliban fell late last year, had escaped into Pakistan with Abu Zubaydah, a senior deputy to Osama bin Laden. (2) Tipped off by Zubaydah -- who was arrested in Pakistan in late March and has since been relentlessly interrogated in a top-secret location -- authorities had recently connected a fresh pair of very alarming dots: they had pieced Padilla's name together with vague allegations from Zubaydah about a "dirty bomb" plot, possibly aimed at Washington, D.C. Even so, the Feds were lucky. Though Padilla came to their attention back in March, U.S. intelligence officials say they did not realize how dangerous he was until weeks after he took off on his trip, and for more than a month they had no firm fix on his whereabouts. Only a last-minute search of itineraries of thousands of passengers known to be traveling toward the United States had turned up Padilla's name -- less than 48 hours before his flight to Chicago.
這一空中監控是針對一個叫何塞·帕迪拉,又名阿卜杜拉·阿勒·穆哈季爾的人,一個布魯克林出生的街頭流氓,調查人員認定他是潛在的基地組織的恐怖分子。一個月內,他詭密地出沒在卡拉奇、蘇黎世、開羅等城市,后又在蘇黎世現身――這種在國際城市間飛來飛去的情況,我們常與基地組織的陰謀聯系在一起――美國當局相信帕迪拉是要回國制造混亂,也可能僅僅是在尋找襲擊目標。帕迪拉是國外恐怖組織的成員,塔利班去年底垮臺后,他跟隨本·拉登的高級副手阿卜·祖巴伊達竄逃至巴基斯坦。根據3月底在巴基斯坦被捕,并在一個高度機密的地點受到長時間嚴刑審訊的祖巴伊達提供的情況,當局近來將一組極其驚人的新的情況聯系在一起:他們將帕迪拉的名字與祖巴伊達含糊提到的一項可能以華盛頓為攻擊目標的臟彈計劃聯系在一起。即便如此,聯邦調查局仍算僥幸。雖然帕迪拉自3月以來就引起了他們的注意,美國情報官員說他們直到他起程之后的幾個星期里才意識到他是多么危險,在一個多月的時間內,他們不知道他的確切行蹤。直到在對成千上萬個前往美國的乘客的旅行路線進行最后一刻核查時才找到了帕迪拉的名字――這時離他登上前往芝加哥的班機不到48小時。
4 FBI bomb and hazardous-materials specialists had been deployed to O'Hare to await Padilla's arrival. But the landing at O'Hare International Airport at 1:30 p.m. was as uneventful as the plane ride. Once in, Padilla was whisked away to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan, the high-rise federal prison a few blocks from Ground Zero.
于是聯邦調查局炸彈及危險物品專家被派往奧海厄機場等候帕迪拉的到來。不過像整個飛行過程一樣,下午1:30飛機在奧海厄國際機場降落時波瀾不驚。一進汽車,帕迪拉就被風馳電掣般地押送至坐落在曼哈頓的大都會拘留中心,即距9·11事件現場僅幾個街區之遙的高層聯邦監獄。
5 WAR IN THE SHADOWS 隱密的戰爭