NEW YORK, Feb. 18 (UPI) --
The FBI investigated a group of Iranians shortly after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing whom it suspected were plotting a nuclear attack against New York, according to a report published Sunday. New York's Daily News quoted a former FBI informant as saying the agency investigated whether terrorists were planning to smuggle in radioactive material that could be distributed around Manhattan.
The report cites a former FBI counterintelligence official as saying the agency was concerned that a discharge of radioactive would cause a panic.
"And it could make a large area unusable for a long time," Oliver Revell said. The FBI was particularly worried about nuclear terrorism because of reports that nuclear material was for sale on the Russian black market.
"With the proliferation of nuclear materials coming out of Russia, the fear was not a nuclear weapon but a nuclear-enriched conventional explosion," Revell added.
The informant, a former electrical contractor named Dennis Pappas, said the FBI asked him to install eavesdropping equipment in a Fifth Avenue building to spy on the group. Pappas had a contract to do electrical work in the building the FBI wanted bugged.
Pappas was being investigated at the time for allegedly helping a mob boss launder money. He was charged with racketeering last July. Pappas said he agreed to cooperate with FBI agents after they promised to make the money-laundering charges "go away."
However, the charges were pursued and Pappas is currently in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. The U.S. Attorney's office in Brooklyn and a federal judge have sealed case documents and conducted secret proceedings in the case, the article said.
Pappas said he spied on two former presidents of the New York-based Alavi Foundation, which reportedly is controlled by Iran. In 1992, one of the presidents was arrested and identified in court papers as an agent of the Iranian mission. He was charged with conspiring to export prohibited U.S. technology to Iran but the case was later dropped.
Please add this tag to the story: [portzlines88 adds: The terrorists practiced at a training camp located only thirty miles from Three Mile Island. The FBI knew of this camp and did not alert the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or Three Mile Island. A vehicle intrusion at the TMI nuclear plant exposed vulnerabilities just three weeks before the World Trade Center bombing.]
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