Man Accused of Shoe-Bomb Plot Says He Intends to Plead Guilty
By PAM BELLUCK

BOSTON, Oct. 2 —

"...The man accused of trying to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight with explosives hidden in his shoes filed a motion today saying he intended to plead guilty to all the charges against him.

The man, Richard Colvin Reid, had been scheduled to go on trial on Nov. 4 to face eight counts, including attempted murder and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, and prosecutors were caught by surprise by the move. Justice Department officials said Mr. Reid's motion did not involve any plea deal, meaning that he still faces a potential sentence of life in prison for his role in the harrowing incident on Dec. 22.

Despite Mr. Reid's request to plead guilty, his motion asked a judge to delete from the indictment the government's assertions that he received training from Al Qaeda, apparently an effort to contend he was not acting as a member of a terrorist organization. But a source close to the defense, who insisted on anonymity, said today that Mr. Reid intended to plead guilty regardless of whether a judge agreed to strike the accusations about Al Qaeda.

Mr. Reid, 29, a British citizen, is accused of trying to ignite explosives hidden in the soles of his black high-top sneakers on a Paris-to-Miami flight last Dec. 22. After a flight attendant smelled sulfur from a lighted match and noticed Mr. Reid trying to ignite the tongue of one of his shoes, passengers and crew members overpowered Mr. Reid, and two doctors on board injected him with sedatives..."

Comment of a newsgroup from last year January 2002 on that oddity:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/2002-January/018335.html

Apparently the Wall St Journal reporters bought the computers second
> hand, and purely by chance they were full of incriminating al-Qaeda
> information. What a fantastic bit of luck.
Yup - and despite it being "heavily encrypted" there was nothing preventing
them getting in and finding enough plaintext there for them to recognise its
importance and hand it over to the US military - who devoted five sony
playsta^w^wsupercomputers to breaking the Recovery Agent key. What jolly
good luck for a major us newspaper, yes?

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/2002-January/018341.html

If the decryption was done by a US government agency or a
contractor which does governement work there will be no
disclosure of what encryption cannot be decrypted, and little
if anything about what can. What will be disclosed about
encryption will be misleading accounts in accord with
current and long-standing policy.

We offer the WSJ article for those not subscribed:

http://cryptome.org/wsj-spytrip.htm

Further, we have today inquired of the two WSJ reporters:

-----

alan.cullison@wsj.com, andrew.higgins@wsj.com

Dear Messrs. Cullison and Higgins,

This is in response to your exellent report on the Al Qaeda
computer disks of January 16.

We operate a Web site that covers encryption, Cryptome.org,
and would be grateful for additional information on the encryption
used on the computer disks and files. We have read UK newspaper
accounts yesterday about the alleged Windows encryption system.

Could you reveal what other types and strengths of encryption
were used on the disks and files? Were all files decrypted or
only those you reported on? What was the extent of the primer
on encryption: did it cover the general topic or was it a manual
for a particular program, say, PGP or another? (There have
been news reports on a manual for PGP found elsewhere in
the Afghanistan.)

Can you reveal more about the decryption process, its operators,
computer array, and programs used? Was the cracking private or
governmental? Were you told of the methods used?

-----
NOTE: Nothing about the decryption process was ever revealed.

Another WSJ-journalist, who tried to investigate on Richard Reid, his possible ties to the Pakistan Secret Service, ISI, was Daniel Pearl.

We know his fate: he was later killed, because he probably found out too much.