“From July 2 to July 23, 1989, FBI agents [of the Special Operations Group (SOG)] banged off dozens of color shots of [al Qaeda member/FBI operative Ali Mohamed’s trainees in New York, including El Sayyid] Nosair, [Mahmud] Abouhalima, [Mohammed] Salameh, [Nidal] Ayyad and [Clement Rodney] Hampton-El, suspects later dubbed ‘ME’s’ for ‘Middle Eastern men’ in FBI files…The SOG clearly knew that these men were terrorists in training. Tommy Corrigan, a former senior member of the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, says that the surveillance stemmed from a tip that PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] terrorists were threatening to blow up casinos in Atlantic City [New Jersey]–a lead that seems almost comical now, in light of the crimes that these men would later commit…The chance to interdict their activities soon evaporated when the surveillance was ended. By the end of that summer, the ‘ME’s’ and their Green Beret-linked leader [Ali Mohamed] simply faded back into the shadows, and the FBI’s NYO [New York Office] reportedly closed its file on Ali Mohamed’s trainees.”
– Peter Lance, Triple Cross, Pages 50-51