Inside The Terrorists' Lairs

Ran

ging from the mysterious to the chilling, documents and weapons found by TIME in visits to seven abandoned al-Qaeda safe houses in Kabul last week depict an organizationally and technically sophisticated apparatus. The discoveries--including detailed personnel records for fighters, crates of French-made MILAN antitank missiles and sketches illustrating the ideal place to hide a bomb on an airplane--may help authorities trace the terror network and thwart future attacks.

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At one five-bedroom suburban home, TIME found inventory forms for arms checked in by fighters. They detailed the type of weapon (from Kalashnikov rifle to Soviet-era T-62 tank), its country of origin and serial number, and the organization to which it belonged, usually a Pakistani group, the Taliban or "specially for al-Qaeda." Other printed forms listed basic data about individual fighters, including name, nationality, health condition, training background and official role. One Palestinian fighter, listed as Abu Majid, 24, was noted to have extensive combat experience "against the Jews," that is, the Israelis, in south Lebanon. He had joined a unit of al-Qaeda in August 2000. But unlike other fighters, he indicated on his form that he had no desire for more training: "I'm interested in participating in suicide operations, and I am prepared to serve either inside or outside this country."

Basements of other houses were stocked with antitank mines and machine guns. Students' notebooks were filled with descriptions of explosives and demolition techniques--including those for underwater attacks. One printout inserted into a notebook gave precise instructions for making a mini-mine "using common plastic soap dishes." More alarming documents, including a formula for ricin (a poisonous biological agent derived from castor seeds) and diagrams of nuclear bombs, were found by a Times of London reporter. But at least one item was a phony: a nuclear-bomb recipe taken from a parody website. Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge insisted last week that the nuclear documents tell us no more than we already knew. A U.S. official in Washington who is monitoring what's being found goes further, telling TIME the documents suggest that bin Laden had been frustrated in his efforts to get or build a bomb. On the other hand, it stands to reason that fleeing operatives would have tried to take the most damning evidence with them.

U.S. officials tell TIME that agents have been gathering material from these sites and expect a windfall of intelligence. But it was not until late Friday, four days after the Taliban fled Kabul, that the houses were sealed off with new locks. It was unclear by whom. Until then, Afghan neighbors report, there was no sign of anyone but journalists and looters visiting the houses, hauling away the very treasures--hard drives, manuals, videotapes, lists of recruits--for which U.S. officials have been scouring the earth. If anything was left by the time U.S. agents got into the act, the government may have a trove of new clues with which to connect the al-Qaeda dots.