WASHINGTON (KRT) ­ Two Middle Eastern men who paid cash for one-way airline tickets from New York to Amsterdam and apparently gave false phone numbers to a New York City travel agency were being questioned Monday by the FBI, the agency said.
The men bought tickets for Friday night’s Delta Air Lines Flight 80, scheduled to leave John F. Kennedy International Airport at 8:15 p.m. They were detained before boarding the flight, which was canceled.
The FBI would not identify them, or two other Middle Eastern men who went to the same travel agency later the same day and tried to buy one-way tickets for the same flight. They walked out of the office after the travel agent became suspicious and started to make a phone call, law enforcement officials said.
“The investigation is ongoing,” said an FBI spokesman who asked not to be named. At the very least, investigators were pleased that travel agents are looking for suspicious customers and notifying the FBI when they find them, the spokesman said.
The two men, who are still in custody, could face immigration violations, the FBI said.
In other developments Monday, U.S. authorities said they believe four overseas bombing plots have been thwarted since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. U.S. officials identified the targets of the four plots as the U.S. Embassy in Paris, an American building in Turkey, U.S. Embassy buildings in Yemen and a NATO building in Brussels.
The plots against the U.S. Embassy in Paris and NATO headquarters in Brussels have been widely reported. Police across Europe have made numerous arrests in that case, including two men identified as potential suicide bombers.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, police in Brussels took four men into custody in connection with a plot to drive a truck bomb into NATO headquarters.
Information on the Turkey and Yemen plots was less specific. Over the last month, 225 people overseas have been arrested for terrorist-related activities in about 40 countries, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft.
On Monday, Ashcroft met with Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s interior minister. Spanish police and the FBI have been investigating suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta’s visits to Spain in January and July. Atta spent several days in a resort town south of Barcelona and was suspected of meeting with Islamic extremists.
Atta also met in Spain with a Tunisian man now in Spanish custody who is believed to have been sent from Afghanistan to supervise Osama bin Laden’s terrorist operations in Europe, Spanish authorities said.
Ashcroft told reporters Sunday that a crop-dusting plot to disperse toxic substances on U.S. targets might have been averted by grounding the planes and alerting commercial sprayers to safeguard their equipment.
“We felt that there was some pretty serious information ­ the president, I think related this the other night ­ that there had been very significant interest (by terrorists) expressed in crop dusting,” Ashcroft told reporters. “We took steps to alert the industry.”
The FBI warned last Thursday that another terrorist attack may occur in the United States or overseas “over the next several days” and that the public and law enforcement officials should remain on the “highest alert” for suspicious activity.
Although several days have now passed, the warning remains in place, an FBI official said Monday.
The FBI is also looking for a pilot, believed to be Saudi Arabian, who in August bought two small planes at an airport near Fort Campbell, Ky., where the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment is stationed, officials said. The 160th is expected to play a key role in any Special Forces campaign to locate Taliban and al-Qaida leaders.

— Knight Ridder

correspondent Kevin Murphy contributed to this report