Hitting the Wall

DOUG MILLS/AP
Bipartisan Snapshot: Bush signs the antiterrorism bill Friday

Not long after Sept. 11, an FBI agent got a call from one of his usual targets, a guy in the Mafia he investigates regularly. The real-life Soprano joked that if the bureau needed help persuading a suspected terrorist to talk, the interrogation experts in the Mob would be happy to oblige.

The agent later recounted this story with a laugh. But now, seven weeks after the terrorist attacks, several key suspects in U.S. custody remain uncooperative even as investigators continue to warn that another deadly assault will come soon. Last week the Washington Post reported that some frustrated officials were actually discussing whether to seek approval for using truth drugs on the detainees. (The FBI denied the story.) Another option, since the U.S. would not formally condone torture, is to extradite the most intransigent detainees to allied nations known for bare-knuckle police work--a legally questionable move made on rare occasions even before Sept. 11.

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Investigators may be vexed by the silent, suspicious few--who, sources say, number 10 at most. But many of the other 970 or so detainees have reason to be annoyed too. No evidence links the vast majority of them to terrorists. The evidence against some detainees is provocative but inconclusive, as in the case of several who were arrested after the FBI intercepted celebratory phone calls among them in the hours following the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the New York Times. To be sure, many detainees have been charged with immigration violations or other crimes unrelated to terrorism. Yet some have been imprisoned for weeks in cramped conditions, often without access to telephones or Muslim meals, according to their lawyers. San Diego attorney Randall Hamud says he has three clients who were treated "like animals," shackled in chilly cells and thoroughly strip-searched twice a day. One has been released, but the other two have been charged--one on an immigration violation and the other with lying to the grand jury about knowing two of the hijackers. Hamud says his clients knew the hijackers only casually and had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Authorities will say virtually nothing about the detainees in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, where Hamud's clients were held, but federal prison officials have said they are trying their best to meet inmates' needs. Attorney General John Ashcroft has instructed all Justice Department employees to ensure that detainees' rights are protected.

Last week Congress dramatically expanded the government's power to detain those designated as suspected terrorists. Under the new law, those individuals can be held for questioning for up to seven days without being charged with a crime (the old limit was 48 hours). In special cases, the government can renew the detention orders for as long as six months. The Justice Department sought these powers partly because the Sept. 11 inquiry has shown how difficult it is to root out terrorists who hide as law-abiding citizens. But the policy of rounding up all suspects has irked some agents who generally prefer to keep targets free and under surveillance in the hope that they will yield more clues. "I've spent the past two weeks talking to many of the same people I talked to in the first two days, and I'm not getting a whole lot more," says an agent in the field.

But what will it take to get more? What happens to the innocent when authorities veer toward the fringes of the Constitution in order to find the bad guys? For the past three weeks, TIME has investigated both the detainees and their keepers to answer that question. Government documents and interviews with those on both sides of the detention cells offer a rare glimpse inside the biggest--and at times most confusing--criminal probe in American history.

Take the puzzling case of Mohammed Refai. Until Sept. 18, Refai, 40, whose brother says he was a civil engineer in Syria, managed the Gas O Clean in Akron, Ohio. On that day, the Immigration and Naturalization Service detained him on the charge that he had married an American only to get a green card. According to documents reviewed by TIME that were written by federal investigators in early October, Refai "showed deception" on a lie-detector test. Agents wrote that they had unearthed financial information linking hijacker Saeed Alghamdi to an Akron apartment complex where Refai lived. A search of Refai's residence and business turned up cigarette lighters with concealed knives--perfect for a hijacking--and videos of "buildings, bridges and power plants" in Chicago; Niagara Falls, N.Y.; and Washington. Agents learned that he had talked about naming his son Osama.

For a time, all this evidence might have convinced some agents that they had found a "player"--FBI-speak for a solid terrorist prospect. Detectives always look for patterns among criminals, and Refai's factitious marriage was similar to that of some suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Germany, who married German women only to gain immigration rights. But last week a law-enforcement official in Ohio said flatly that Refai is not a terrorist. The official said there was no known connection between Refai and the hijackers, Osama bin Laden or any other terrorists.