Former police chief recalls foiling border terror case

It was about 2 a.m. on a moonless October night in 1987 when the police chief of a small northern Vermont town spotted a man carrying a black bag and walking down the railroad tracks from Canada toward a waiting van about a mile south of the border.

The man turned out to be linked to a Lebanese extremist group. And in his bag, later recovered from a ditch, were a ski mask and a propane-canister bomb.

"If it had been two minutes later, they would have been in the van and gone on their way, and I'd have never known the difference," recalled Richford's long-retired police chief, Richard Jewett, who won numerous awards for apparently foiling an attack. "I guess luck was on my side."

FILE - In this June 22, 1988 file photo, Georges Younan, right, one of three defendants of Lebanese descent from Montreal, Canada, is led into federal court in handcuffs in Burlington, Vt. Younan and the two others were caught smuggling the makings of a bomb into the U.S., on Oct. 23, 1987, in Richford, Vt. All three were convicted and sent to federal prison. (AP PhotoToby Talbot, File)

Whether it was luck or not, Jewett beat the odds in a way. While President Donald Trump, in arguing for a border wall, has said repeatedly that terrorists are slipping across from Mexico, known cases of extremists entering the U.S. through its land borders to the north or the south are exceedingly rare.

Even then, State Department reports on terrorism have expressed more concern about the Canadian border than the Mexican one because Canada, unlike Mexico, has been home to "violent extremists inspired by terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaida and their affiliates and adherents," according to a 2017 paper.

A study issued last month by the libertarian Cato Institute found that between 1975 and 2017, seven people from "special interest" countries — states tied at least loosely to terrorism — were convicted of planning attacks on U.S. soil. Four of those individuals entered illegally from Canada, none from Mexico.

In this Jan. 17, 2019 photo, former town police chief Richard Jewett talks about the night in 1987 when he apprehended a man who carried a bomb across the border from Canada into the United States in Richford, Vt.. At a time when terrorism is part of the discussion about whether to build a wall on the U.S. southern border to protect the country, the Richford incident was the only one of its kind when anyone was caught trying to enter the United States illegally as part of a terrorist plot. (AP PhotoWilson Ring)

The only known terrorists who crossed illegally from Mexico in the 42-year span covered by the Cato study were three ethnic Albanians from Macedonia who came as children with their parents in 1984 and, in their 20s, were arrested in a foiled plot to attack the Army's Fort Dix in New Jersey, in 2007.

"This shows how rare it is for people to try to enter the U.S. illegally as terrorists by crossing a border," said Alex Nowrasteh, one of the authors of the Cato study. "It shows how Mexico is not how these folks typically try to enter and the terrorism justification for building the wall is probably the weakest."

In fact, most people with terroristic intent come into the country by air and are typically in the United States legally. The 19 men who carried out the 9/11 attacks all entered the country legally. The brothers who carried out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people entered the U.S. on tourist visas with their families and were later granted asylum.

FILE - In this June 22, 1988 file photo, Walid Kabbani, right, one of three defendants of Lebanese descent from Montreal, Canada, is led into federal court in handcuffs in Burlington, Vt. Kabbani and the two others were caught smuggling the makings of a bomb into the U.S., on Oct. 23, 1987, in Richford, Vt. All three were convicted and sent to federal prison. (AP PhotoToby Talbot, File)

On the Canadian border, Ahmed Ressam was caught by border agents in December 1999 after he tried to enter the United States at Port Angeles, Washington, with bomb components in the trunk of his car. It was later determined Ressam planned to attack the Los Angeles airport during the millennium.

"The evidence shows that if we are going to talk about terrorism, there is actually good reason to think more carefully about the U.S.'s northern border than the U.S.'s southern border," said Emily Gilbert, a terrorism expert and director of the Canadian studies program at the University of Toronto.

The U.S.-Canadian border is over 5,500 miles (8,900 kilometers) long, more than 2½ times the length of the U.S. border with Mexico, and is crossed by numerous roads and railroad tracks, with many wide-open stretches. In Richford, the border cuts through farm fields and forests with occasional granite markers in the ground.

FILE - In this Oct. 28, 1987 file photo, two of three Canadians of Lebanese descent are led into federal court in Burlington, Vt. Walid Nicolas Kabbani, left, and Walid Mourad were caught with a third accomplice smuggling the makings of a bomb into the U.S., on Oct. 23, 1987, in Richford, Vt. All three were convicted and sent to federal prison. (AP PhotoToby Talbot, File)

Worries about terrorists crossing from Canada have been reduced by the close cooperation between the two countries, and security has been tightened since 9/11. Hundreds more Border Patrol agents are stationed along the border (authorities won't disclose the total), surveillance has been enhanced with such things as electronic sensors and helicopters, and those trying to cross the border must show a passport or certain other documents, none of which were required before Sept. 11, 2001.

In the Richford incident, Walid Kabbani was seized at the border, and his two accomplices in the van were arrested at a local hotel the morning after. U.S. authorities said the three men, Lebanese-born Canadians from Montreal, were members of an extremist group responsible for the 1982 assassination of Lebanese President-elect Bashir Gemayel.

Federal officials were never able to say for sure what their intended target was. All three were convicted or pleaded guilty to explosives and immigration violations and went to prison, getting out in the 1990s.

FILE - In this June 22, 1988 file photo, Walid Mourad, center, one of three defendants of Lebanese descent from Montreal, Canada, is led into federal court in handcuffs in Burlington, Vt. Mourad and the two others were caught smuggling the makings of a bomb into the U.S., on Oct. 23, 1987, in Richford, Vt. All three were convicted and sent to federal prison. (AP PhotoToby Talbot, File)

Terrorism was the last thing on Jewett's mind when he became police chief in the border town, which has around 2,300 people and is about 2,000 miles from the Mexican border. He said the current debate about a border wall with Mexico and the recent 35-day government shutdown it provoked has gone too far.

"I do also understand we need some protections on our borders. And I just don't know what it is," Jewett said. "It's hard."

AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department said Monday that it had withdrawn several thousand documents and “media” related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein after lawyers complained to a New York judge that the lives of nearly 100 victims had been “turned upside down” by sloppy redactions in the government's latest release of records.

The exposed materials include nude photos showing the faces of potential victims as well as names, email addresses and other identifying information that was either unredacted or not fully obscured.

The department blamed it on “technical or human error.”

In a letter to the New York judges overseeing the sex trafficking cases brought against Epstein and confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton wrote that the department had taken down nearly all materials identified by victims or their lawyers, along with a “substantial number” of documents identified independently by the government.

Clayton said the department has “revised its protocols for addressing flagging documents” after victims and their lawyers requested changes. Documents are promptly pulled down when flagged by victims, then evaluated before a redacted version of the document can be reposted, “ideally within 24 to 36 hours.”

Two lawyers for Epstein victims wrote the court Sunday seeking “immediate judicial intervention” because of what they described as thousands of instances when the government had failed to redact names and other personally identifying information.

Eight women who identify as Epstein victims added comments to the letter to Judge Richard M. Berman. One wrote that the records’ release was “life threatening." Another said she’d gotten death threats after 51 entries included her private banking information, forcing her to try to shut down her credit cards and accounts.

“There is no conceivable degree of institutional incompetence sufficient to explain the scale, consistency, and persistence of the failures that occurred — particularly where the sole task ordered by the Court and repeatedly emphasized by DOJ was simple: redact known victim names before publication,” the lawyers, Brittany Henderson and Brad Edwards, wrote.

Berman, who presided over Epstein’s sex trafficking case, scheduled a conference for Wednesday.

Also Monday, a section of the Justice Department’s Epstein files website that had contained public court records from Epstein and Maxwell’s criminal cases and civil lawsuits was no longer functioning.

A message seeking comment on the website issue was left for the Justice Department.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that there have been sporadic errors in redacting, or blacking out, sensitive information but that the Justice Department has tried to work quickly to address them.

“Every time we hear from a victim or their lawyer that they believe that their name was not properly redacted, we immediately rectified that. And the numbers we’re talking about, just so the American people understand, we’re talking about .001 percent of all the materials,” Blanche said.

Dozens of Associated Press reporters analyzing the files have so far found multiple occasions where a name was redacted in one document, only to be left exposed in another version of the same file.

In other places, names and email addresses are crossed out but not fully blackened out, so they’re still visible. Other text redactions can be easily overridden by simply double clicking on them to reveal the hidden text underneath.

The Justice Department has said all nude or pornographic images were redacted from the 2,000-some videos and 180,000 images in the release, even if they were commercially produced, as the agency considered all women depicted in the images as potential victims.

But reporters with The New York Times still found dozens of uncensored photos of naked young people with their faces unredacted.

The newspaper said the images have since been largely removed or redacted after it notified the Justice Department. It said some of the images appeared to have been taken on the beach at Epstein’s private Caribbean island while others are in a bedroom setting.

In another instance, the AP found a set of more than 100 images of a young, unidentified female lounging on a bed, standing on a beach and at other summertime locations while wearing a short top.

The images are almost fully blacked out so only the person’s arms and legs are clearly visible, save for the very last image, a profile photo that is completely unredacted and reveals her face.

Elsewhere in the files, the face of one of Epstein's alleged underage victims was clearly shown on an organizational chart created by federal investigators.

The poor redactions didn’t just involve victim information.

One email showed Epstein’s entire credit card number, expiration date and security code. An interview transcript from the investigation into Epstein’s suicide included a jail worker’s full Social Security number and date of birth. Some email addresses were visible under thin cross-outs.

At an unrelated sex trafficking trial in New York on Monday, lawyers for two high-end real estate brokers and their brother asked for a mistrial because their names had appeared in some of the Epstein documents.

Deanna Paul, a defense lawyer at the trial of Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander, said prosecutors had “destroyed the possibility of a fair trial” by letting documents get out that falsely suggested an association with Epstein. The brothers have pleaded not guilty to drugging and raping multiple girls and women from 2008 to 2021. They aren't accused of having anything to do with Epstein's abuse of underage girls.

Judge Valerie E. Caproni rejected the mistrial request after she individually questioned jurors, all of whom said they hadn’t seen any news about the brothers. Still, she confronted a prosecutor about the matter, asking, “Government, really?”

“Yes, I understand where the court's coming from,” replied Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Espinosa.

She said the documents had been withdrawn from public circulation.

__ The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.

A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, shows the report when Epstein was taken into custody on July 6, 2019. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)