Attackers Had 'Cookbook' for Terror

N E W   Y O R K, Sept. 27 -- Perhaps hijack ringleader Mohammed Atta just loved the gambling and the glitz of Las Vegas. But one leading terrorism expert believes his two trips to the Strip this summer are not so innocently explained.

Atta stayed in a $55 a night room in a rundown part of Las Vegas .

"All I've heard is some of the morons who are involved in this activity may have stopped by here to have a little bit of vacation," says Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. "That happens in Las Vegas."

But Atta may have been casing the town in preparation for a terrorist attack.

"Las Vegas possibly was one of the main targets," says Dr. Magnus Ranstorp, deputy director of Scotland's Center for the Study of Terrorism at St. Andrews University. "When you're dealing with someone I think who had such an instrumental role in pulling this operation off, it is entirely plausible that there would have been reconnaissance missions on other targets that would represent the symbol of what would be considered, by Muslims, American decadence."

Ranstorp says that based in a large part on an incredible intelligence discovery: an 18-chapter, 179-page terrorist training manual — a kind of terrorism cookbook — allegedly paid for and distributed by terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. It was found on a computer disk during a raid on a suspected terrorist's apartment in England two years ago.

There may be more than one version of the manual, which according to Ranstorp contains, "all you want to know of how to infiltrate Western societies, if you are a Muslim, to avoid detection."

Chapter One, Lesson One, outlines "The Mission": "The overthrow of the godless governments and their replacement with an Islamic regime." Among the targets listed: embassies and vital economic centers, bridges leading into and out of cites.

"Blasting and destroying places of amusement, immorality, and sin" is cited, but are described as "not vital targets." Given Atta's two mysterious visits to Las Vegas, however, their mention in the manual remains a cause of great concern there.