Plea Suggests Terrorism Network

Twenty-six months after the deadly bombings of two American embassies in Africa, federal prosecutors Friday got their first guilty plea in the case, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod.

But along with the guilty plea came the knowledge that the accused had served in America's armed forces, and that he was part of a massive Islamic extremist network of which many members remain at large.

Ali Mohamed, 48, a former U.S. Army sergeant, entered the plea in U.S. District Court in New York City in accordance with the terms of an agreement with the government.

Mohamed is among 17 people named so far in an indictment for the embassy bombings. Of those, six defendants are held in New York, three others are held abroad and eight are fugitives, including bin Laden, who is on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List.

The U.S. government has offered a $5 million reward for the capture of each fugitive. The first trial in the case is scheduled for January.

Mohammed, an Egyptian who traveled to the United States in the mid-1980s, became a citizen and enlisted in the army despite being on a State Department watch list as a security threat, raising questions about how enlistees are screened.

"How this man on a…terrorist watch list nonetheless managed to get into the country and subsequently enlist in the army—it doesn't say a lot for the due diligence that should have taken place," said terrorism analyst Brian Jenkins.

The state department had no comment Friday.

Mohammed said the object of the conspiracy that he joined in the late 1980s was to force the United States out of the Middle East.

He left the U.S. Army in 1989 after three years of service. In the military, he earned a Parchute Badge and an M-16 Expert Badge, teaching soldiers in the Special Forces about Muslim culture.

In entering his plea, Mohamed read from a statement in which he admitted he helped secretly move bin Laden from Pakistan to Sudan and trained members of his terrorist organization, al Qaeda.

"The objective of all of this was to attack any Western target in the Middle East," said Mohamed.

It is believed that after his stint with the army, Mohammed may have trained Islamic radicals in Brooklyn.

Bin Laden, a Saudi-born millionaire, has been portrayed by the U.S. government as the mastermind of the bombings of the U.S. embassies. He is on the short-list of suspects in the apparent bombing of the USS Cole.

"It confirms that there is a worldwide network…a vast network of individuals who are to a lesser or greater degree connected with causes that are hostile to the United States," said Jenkins.

In Friday's hearing, Judge Leonard B. Sand first said the agreement guaranteed a minimum of 25 years in prison, but after an objection by defense attorneys, the judge did not specify the length of the potential prison term.