The revelations by senior Federal Bureau of Investigation and CIA officials are contained in The One Percent Doctrine, a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. journalist and author Ron Suskind.

Though it does not mention Mr. Zubaydah's tip about Mr. Harkat, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has confirmed he identified Mr. Harkat as the former operator of a guest house in the Pakistani city of Peshawar for extremists travelling to Chechnya. Mr. Harkat has denied any connection to Mr. Zubaydah.

It is not known what other incriminating information Canadian authorities have against him.

Yet even before Mr. Harkat's December 2002 arrest and detention on a government-issued security certificate, there were serious doubts within the FBI and CIA about Mr. Zubaydah's credibility, according to the book.

Their apprehensions and that "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and leap, screaming, at every word he uttered," were ignored by senior White House officials who wanted to publicly trumpet Mr. Zubaydah's March 2002 capture in Pakistan as a major coup for the "war on terror," writes Mr. Suskind.

But Mr. Zubaydah was little more than a "travel agent" for al-Qaeda operatives moving around the globe and had no operational role, says the book.

Quoting an unnamed top CIA official, it describes a high-level meeting at CIA headquarters:

"Around the room, a lot of people just rolled eyes when we heard comments from the White House. I mean, (President George W.) Bush and (Vice-President Dick) Cheney knew what we knew about Zubaydah. The guy had psychological issues. He was in a way, expendable. It was like calling someone who runs a company's in-house travel department the COO (chief operating officer). The thinking was, why the hell did the president have to put us in this box?"

Mr. Harkat's lawyer, Matt Webber, yesterday said the book's assertions about Mr. Zubaydah credibility are "quite staggering.

"It goes to show just how unreliable some of the (intelligence) information is. How could this have ever been presented as a reliable source of information in light of this?"

In March 2002, nine months before Mr. Harkat's arrest, Mr. Zubaydah was captured by CIA, FBI and Pakistani intelligence officers at his home in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Authorities, writes Mr. Suskind, believed he was an important, but mysterious player in al-Qaeda.

Counter-terrorism intelligence over the previous two years had picked up numerous references to the 30-year-old Saudi-born Palestinian. "His name was intoned by operatives at all levels, by new recruits, by foot soldiers, and wannabes throughout South Asia and the Mideast. It wasn't always clear what Zubaydah was doing, or where he fit in the wider organization. Just that he seemed to connect people."

More than four years after U.S.-led forces toppled the extremist Taliban government, Afghanistan is gripped by its deadliest spate of post-invasion violence. To try to curb the bloodshed, more than 10,000 coalition forces have launched a major offensive against militants across southern Afghanistan. More than 600 people, mainly militants, have been killed since May.

But Karzai, who has previously scorned large-scale anti-militant campaigns, rejected the continued spilling of Afghan blood in military operations. "It is not acceptable for us that in all this fighting, Afghans are dying." Even "if they are Taliban, they are sons of this land."

Afghan and coalition forces on Thursday raided a Taliban compound northwest of Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan province, killing eight militants, the coalition said. Six others were captured.

Karzai said the focus on hunting militants doesn't address terrorism's root causes. "We must engage strategically in disarming terrorism by stopping their sources of supply of money, training, equipment and motivation," he said.

The war on terrorism, said Karzai, needs to be broadened beyond Afghan borders. Many Afghani officials have accused neighboring Pakistan of doing too little to capture Taliban militants. Pakistan denies the claims.

A February donors' conference in London pledged $10.5 billion in aid for Afghanistan, most for improving security.

The fact is that no one has done a comprehensive study of the health consequences on an estimated 75,000 police, firefighters and construction workers who responded to the World Trade Center site - and Worby has stepped into the vacuum.

"You're looking at the system," Worby said. "I'm it."

He has sued New York City and its contractors, who oversaw the rescue and cleanup, claiming they failed to protect workers from cancer-causing benzene and other hazardous chemicals that filled the air. Worby returns today to a federal court in Manhattan, where the defense will argue for a dismissal on the grounds that the city made a "good faith" effort to safeguard workers by providing them equipment, such as masks, and trying to ensure they used it.

The city's lawyers also claim that New York is legally immune from liability while providing services during an attack on U.S. soil.

Worby says the city should have shut down the operation, and declared it a hazardous waste site, immediately after it was clear no survivors would be found. Instead, workers remained there for months, forming bucket brigades that cleared debris and searched the smoking rubble for bodies.

He has thousands of clients saying they basically fended for themselves the first few days, then were given masks with filters that were later replaced because they were deemed insufficient to block out all the toxins.

It was 20 months after the attacks that Worby's first two clients - NYPD detectives John Walcott of Pomona and Richard Volpe of Mount Kisco - walked into his office to report they were suffering life-threatening conditions.

Both men arrived at Ground Zero shortly after the towers came crashing down. They searched the pile for survivors the first few days as part of the bucket brigade, wearing nothing more than surgical masks. They spent the next several months recovering body fragments, volunteering on days off. They felt so strongly about the mission that they braved the conditions, even as they began coughing up blood and black soot.

"I thought this could be doing something to my body, but at the same time, I was thinking it's my job and that they wouldn't put me in a dangerous situation like that," Volpe, 38, said.

"I was told everything was safe," Walcott, 41, said.

A married father with a newborn child, Walcott became increasingly sluggish in the ensuing months. He attributed it to having to wake up early to coach hockey at Fox Lane High School.

In May 2003, he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and told he would be dead in a week without treatment. So he began five months of chemotherapy and had a stem-cell transplant.

Told his cancer likely resulted from his exposure to benzene at Ground Zero, he also went in search of an attorney. He and Volpe - who is suffering kidney failure - contacted two attorneys whose fees were too high, before finding Worby.
'A voice to 9/11 heroes'

Worby, a 53-year-old Bedford resident, already was one of the region's most successful personal injury lawyers, an outspoken advocate who set a Westchester and Putnam county record in 1989 by securing $18 million for a construction worker hit by a car on the Hutchinson River Parkway. He's also a composer, playwright, author, producer and TV writer, according to his Web site. Ice-T and Snoop Dogg, whom Worby calls "unrelated brothers," will star in one of his screenplays that begins shooting in the fall.

He came out of semiretirement to file the suit in September 2004.

Initially, his lawsuit got little attention, partly because few took him seriously, including the news media he was courting. But his client list kept growing, largely by word of mouth. Walcott and Volpe, for their part, have referred several people with whom they worked at the World Trade Center site.

Although Worby has only met a couple of hundred of his clients, he now has more than a dozen lawyers working full time on the case and a team of medical consultants. His profile has grown to the point that media and politicians are now seeking him out.

"David Worby has given a voice to 9/11 heroes who would otherwise be suffering in silence," said U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., who has met Worby to discuss his suit and her fight for a greater government response to the health concerns. "Because our government has basically abandoned these workers, advocates like Mr. Worby have had to intervene on their behalf."

This month, he's sat down with everyone from The New York Times to "60 Minutes," declaring that 57 of his clients have already died from 9/11 causes, including two this week.

"I predicted two years ago that I would have hundreds of people dying and nobody listened," he said. "I have 300 people dying of cancer in the next few months. We're just now entering the latency period for these toxins."

But as with most of the sickness and deaths, he won't disclose names or evidence linking the illnesses to 9/11, citing privacy concerns. He referred The Journal News to one doctor who is assisting his case, but that person did not return repeated calls.

"All you people in the media are torturing me," Worby said. "You say, 'Give me doctors, give me scientists.' Find your own scientists. Challenge me."

He has no medical degree, though one of his consultants dubbed him a "brown-shoe epidemiologist."

The reality is one of the deaths formally linked to 9/11 recovery work was NYPD Detective James Zadroga of New Jersey, whose autopsy found he died from respiratory failure caused by exposure to toxic dust.

Some experts say the types of cancer Worby's reporting typically wouldn't occur for at least 10 years after exposure but note it could be hastened by the extreme level of toxins at Ground Zero.

"It's a very sad commentary that a lawyer working on his own knows more about the health of people who were exposed to 9/11 hazards than the government, which has a responsibility to protect the public health," said Jonathan Bennett, spokesman for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health.
'Reason to be concerned'

The federal government did set up a health registry in 2003 for lower Manhattan residents, workers and rescue personnel. But while 71,000 people participated, the program has come under fire because it gave no medical testing, care or referrals.

Under one federal program, Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City has screened about 16,000 World Trade Center responders and treated 1,800 people, though the treatment has a 16-week wait list.

Dr. Robin Herbert, the program's co-director, said "at least a few" of them have developed cancer, although doctors haven't studied whether they're linked to Sept. 11.

"We are not near the point where we can say anything scientific about the cancer rates among our population," Herbert said.

"The programs we're operating were not funded to specifically track nor identify deaths among WTC responders," she added.

She refused to comment on the suit but said screeners at Mount Sinai have been "badly surprised by the persistence of our patients' WTC-related illnesses."

"We do know there were various cancer-causing agents in the environment, and I think there is certainly reason to be concerned and to watch this group very carefully," she said.

Worby has not declared how much money his suit will seek but said that his priority is getting the government to address the crisis facing his clients and others.

"This is a mission, this is not a case," he said. "I've never seen anything like this in my life. It has nothing to do with being a lawyer. It has everything to do with understanding the medical catastrophe and helping people."