WASHINGTON -- Following is a transcript of a news conference held Tuesday by James Comey, deputy attorney general for the U.S. Department of Justice, concerning Jose Padilla.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/06/01/comey.padilla.transcript/

In 1998, Padilla flew from Miami to Cairo, where he spent the next year and a half. He has admitted that in March of 2000, he attend the religious pilgrimage, the hajj, in Saudi Arabia.

In early 2001, Padilla walked into the American consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, and said his passport had been lost in a market in Karachi and got a new one: a classic act of al Qaeda tradecraft designed to eliminate suspicious travel stamps and cover the nature of the traveler's work.

Atef then sent Padilla to a training site near the Kandahar airport, where Padilla would train under the watchful eye of an al Qaeda explosives expert and be trained with the man who was to be his partner in this mission to destroy apartment buildings, another al Qaeda operative. When Padilla saw this other operative, he recognized him immediately because he had known him from Florida.

Padilla and the other operative trained under the guidance of this explosives expert and learned about switches and circuits and timers. They learned how to seal an apartment to trap the natural gas and to prepare an explosion using that gas that would have maximum yield and destroy an apartment building.

I told you that Padilla recognized this other al Qaeda operative who was to be his partner, recognized him immediately. You will, too. Because that other operative was Adnan Shukrijumah, also known as Jafar or Jafar the pilot, a man that the attorney general and the FBI director told this country about last week; one of the seven we want so badly to find.

Padilla and Jafar, though, could not get along. That personality conflict led them to abandon this operation, although only temporarily, after Padilla reported to Atef that he didn't think he could work with Jafar and he couldn't work this operation alone.

As I continue with Padilla's story, let me note, as the attorney general and Director Mueller did last week, that Jafar took another path and remains out there somewhere and is extraordinarily dangerous: an explosives expert who is also an experienced commercial pilot.

Padilla's life was spared only because he happened that night to be staying at the safe house run by his explosives teacher. But he returned and dug his mentor Atef's body out of the rubble.

Padilla says it was at the place in Faisalabad that he and a new accomplice, a new partner, approached Abu Zubaida with an operation in which they proposed to travel to the United States to detonate a nuclear improvised bomb that they had learned to make from research on the Internet.

We know separately that Zubaida did think the nuclear bomb idea was not feasible but he did think as well that another kind of radiological device was very feasible: uranium wrapped with explosives to create a dirty bomb. Zubaida believed this was feasible and encouraged Padilla and his accomplice to pursue it. He warned them, though, that it would not be as easy as they might think. But they seemed convinced that they could do it without getting caught.

KSM suggested that they enter the United States by way of Mexico or by way of Puerto Rico, and that once in the country, they locate high-rise apartment buildings that had natural gas supplied to all floors, that they rent two apartments in each building, seal those apartments, turn on the gas, and set timers to detonate and destroy the buildings simultaneously at a later time. This was precisely the mission that Padilla and Jafar had trained for, and now Padilla had a new accomplice.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed gave Padilla full authority to conduct an operation if he and his partner succeeded in entering the United States.

I should note that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was not himself sure which operation Padilla intended to carry out. By that I mean in Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's mind, it was still possible that Padilla was going to pursue the dirty bomb plot. What KSM knew for sure, however, was that he had authorized this explosives-trained al Qaeda operative to mount an attack in the United States.

According to Padilla's new accomplice, who is also in custody, the one who replaced Jafar, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed wanted them to blow up 20 apartment buildings simultaneously.

In response, Padilla pointed out that he could not possibly rent that many apartments without drawing attention to himself, and that he might have to limit this operation to the destruction of two or three entire apartment buildings.

Had we tried to make a case against Jose Padilla through our criminal justice system, something that I, as the United States attorney in New York, could not do at that time without jeopardizing intelligence sources, he would very likely have followed his lawyer's advice and said nothing, which would have been his constitutional right.

He would likely have ended up a free man, with our only hope being to try to follow him 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and hope -- pray, really -- that we didn't lose him.

In my experience as a prosecutor, one of the hallmarks of truthfulness tends to be stories don't line up exactly. But the core elements do, and we've tried to include it all: include what Padilla says that undercuts what others say that's inconsistent.