The feds let a suspected terrorist slip through their hands last month after he was caught snapping reconnaissance photos of security operations at four federal buildings in lower Manhattan, The Post has learned.
The FBI is investigating the foul-up, which has been cited in law-enforcement memos and at meetings around the country to stress the need for increased vigilance, federal sources said.
The security lapse took place early last month, shortly after four henchmen of exiled Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden were convicted in Manhattan federal court for the bloody August 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.
It also came amid reports that bin Laden was planning a new major offensive against the United States.
According to lawmen, the Federal Protective Service, which is charged with policing federal property, caught a man with Middle Eastern features taking photos of a federal building in downtown Manhattan and brought him to 26 Federal Plaza for questioning.
There service agents confiscated the man’s film, photocopied his visa and passport and took down his address before taking him to an immigration agent to check his status, the sources said.
Immigration officials said they could find no record of the incident.
The suspect was then brought to an FBI agent who was on duty at the time – not an agent assigned to the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force.
The agent released the suspect after deciding there was no legal reason to continue detaining him.
But after his confiscated film was developed a few days later, the feds panicked, sources said.
The pictures zeroed in on security cameras, police posts, security checkpoints and exits and entrances at the new and old Manhattan federal courthouses, 26 Federal Plaza, and the federal building at 290 Broadway.
It was then that the feds finally checked out the suspect’s photocopied ID and learned his visa and passport were bogus and the address he had given did not exist.
“The bottom line is they should have at least run the visa before letting him go,” said one frustrated federal law-enforcement source.
James Guerra, an official with the Fraternal Order of Police DC1 Lodge, which represents service officers, defended his members, noting that there are only 15 federal cops assigned to guard more than 200 sites around the city.
Because of the limited manpower, Guerra said, it’s often difficult to run timely background checks on suspects.
The incident, which is being kept hush-hush outside federal investigative circles, has law-enforcement officials on edge for fear that real steps toward a terror attack are under way.
Internal memos have been circulated about the incident and service officers in other states and in Washington, D.C., have been told about it at roll calls, the sources said.
“The threat level is through the roof,” one source said. “They [terrorists] do counter-surveillance just like we do.”
When the feds searched the Cliffside, N.J., apartment of convicted terrorist El Sayyid Nosair on Nov. 5, 1990, they found detailed photos of the World Trade Center, St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Washington Monument, along with bomb-making manuals.