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PROBERS TO PORE OVER 'LA QAEDA NOSTRA' FILE
By AL GUART
April 11, 2004 -- The FBI last week turned over to the panel looking into pre-9/11 intelligence lapses a pile of documents detailing the efforts of terrorist Ramzi Yousef to recruit the American Mafia into a murderous alliance.
Gregory Scarpa Jr., a jailed mobster working for the FBI in 1996, was tutored by Yousef, convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, on how to smuggle explosives past airport security, use shoes to blow up planes and hijack jets using stolen or phony passports.
But government officials swept the revelations of Colombo gangster under the carpet to avoid lending him credibility and jeopardize earlier mob convictions, sources familiar with his spy work said.
The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States could opt to probe why no action was taken on the Scarpa file, which contains 42 pages of FBI reports and 64 pages of handwritten notes.
Among the shocking secrets Scarpa culled from Yousef over a 10-month period are:
* Al Qaeda hijackers planned to hide explosives or detonators in the heels of shoes, while batteries and wires would be concealed in electric shavers or toys.
* Osama bin Laden's code name was "Bojinga" and he wanted the Mafia to secure up to six U.S. passports for two plane hijackings set for April 1997.
* Bin Laden wanted to meet with Scarpa in Pakistan or Afghanistan to train mobsters in guerrilla warfare and to learn about bank robbery, counterfeiting money and drug trafficking.
* Yousef predicted al Qaeda thugs would "like hijackings so much that they will become addicted to them."
* Yousef plotted to have al Qaeda and the mob coordinate phone-in bomb threats to United Airlines international flights to show their solidarity.
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