He said that at the time of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, he was in New York on a visitor's visa exploring business opportunities. He said he decided to approach the FBI because he was upset by the terrorist attacks on Americans, whom he likes. He also saw an opportunity to realize his dream of living and working in the United States.
Alanssi, a short, stout man with eyeglasses and graying hair, said he offered the FBI information on Yemeni figures who were sympathetic to al Qaeda, and a relationship quickly took off.
Mohamed Alanssi screams after setting himself afire outside the White House.
(AP)
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FBI agent Robert Fuller -- to whom Alanssi faxed his suicide note Monday -- wrote in a January 2003 affidavit that he began working in November 2001 with an unnamed confidential informant who was a Yemeni citizen. The informant "provided information that has proven to be reliable and contributed, in part, to the arrests of 20 individuals and the seizure of over $1 million," Fuller wrote.
In that and a second affidavit, Fuller outlines Alanssi's role in the FBI sting operation in Frankfurt, Germany, that led to Moayad's arrest, as well as the efforts Alanssi made for more than a year to ingratiate himself with Moayad. Alanssi persuaded the cleric to travel to Germany to meet an FBI undercover agent posing as a wealthy American seeking to donate $2 million to terrorist activities.
Those documents corroborate many of the details about the sting operation that Alanssi related in the interviews with a reporter, including his earlier videotaping in October 2002 of a mass wedding of 175 couples organized by Moayad and his delivery of the videotape to the FBI.
Alanssi said that he had once lived near Moayad's mosque in Yemen's capital of Sanaa and that he used that connection -- and his real name -- to gain the cleric's trust. But he said the FBI had promised him that it would not arrest Moayad in Germany while "I'm in the picture."
Despite that promise, he said, the FBI ordered him to go to Moayad's hotel room in Frankfurt just before the sheikh's arrest. His role in the sting quickly became known in Yemen, Alanssi said. Several weeks later, it was leaked to Western papers, including The Post, which included Alanssi's name in a story about the sting that was published Feb. 28, 2003.
As a result of the publicity, Alanssi said, his family in Yemen was harassed by Moayad's followers.
Although the FBI told Alanssi he could bring members of his family to the United States and sent them about $16,000 to buy plane tickets, they have refused to join him, he said. They are angry with him for subjecting them to public disfavor, Alanssi said. His family also is reluctant to come here, he added, because he has not been given permanent U.S. residency, as promised.
According to Alanssi, the FBI also promised him a new identity and "a very big amount [of money] which will make me retired."
None of those promises was written down, he said.
Looking for Money
Alanssi said that after Moayad's arrest, he asked one of his FBI handlers for his money. "He said, 'How much do you want?' " he recalled. "I said, 'Five million.' And he began laughing at me."
Finally, he said, the FBI deposited $100,000 in his bank account and asked him to sign a receipt for the money.
"Wow," said Pat Lang, former chief of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "That's a lot of money to pay an intelligence source."
