Context of 'September 11-13, 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Leave a Clear Trail of Evidence' This is a scalable context timeline. It contains events related to the event September 11-13, 2001: 9/11 Hijackers Leave a Clear Trail of Evidence. You can narrow or broaden the context of this timeline by adjusting the zoom level. The lower the scale, the more relevant the items on average will be, while the higher the scale, the less relevant the items, on average, will be.
Hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar pay $3,000 for a 1998 Toyota Corolla in San Diego. Three days later, the California vehicle registration is made in Almihdhar’s correct name, but a false San Diego address is used. In June 2000, Almihdhar will transfer ownership of the car to Alhazmi just before Almihdhar leaves the US. Alhazmi will buy insurance for the car in October 2000. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 55, 67, 90  ; Cox News Service, 10/21/2001] Alhazmi will get a speeding ticket while driving the car through Oklahoma in April 2001 (see April 1, 2001). The car’s license plate will be queried by police in New Jersey in July 2001 (see July 7, 2001). The car will be found outside Dulles Airport in Washington one day after 9/11 (see September 11-13, 2001). However, shortly before 9/11, an FBI agent assigned to find out if Alhazmi and Almihdhar are in the US will fail to find any records relating to this car, even though information on Alhazmi’s ownership of the car is in nationwide police and motor vehicle databases. He will also fail to check vehicle registration and license plate databases (see September 4-5, 2001 and September 5, 2001). The hijackers in the US return money to Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, one of their facilitators in the United Arab Emirates:
 September 4: Hijacker Mohamed Atta sends al-Hawsawi a FedEx package from Florida. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006 ] The package contains hijacker Fayez Ahmed Banihammad’s ATM card and checkbook. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 10 ] The FedEx bill will be found shortly after 9/11 in the trash at the hotel Atta stays at on the night before 9/11 (see September 11-13, 2001);
September 5: $8,000 is wired from Banihammad’s SunTrust bank account to his bank account in the United Arab Emirates, to which al-Hawsawi has access (see June 25, 2001);
September 8: Mohamed Atta sends $2,860 to “Mustafa Ahmed” from a Western Union office in Laurel, Maryland;
September 8: Later that day Atta sends another $5,000 to “Mustafa Ahmed” from another Western Union office in the same town;
September 9: Hijacker Waleed Alshehri sends $5,000 to “Ahamad Mustafa” from a Western Union office at Logan Airport in Boston;
September 10: Hijacker Marwan Alshehhi sends $5,400 to “Mustafa Ahmad” from a Western Union office at the Greyhound Bus Station in Boston;
September 10: Hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Hani Hanjour use the name “Rawf Al Dog” to send an express mail package from Laurel, Maryland, to Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. When the FBI intercepts the package at Dulles Airport after 9/11, they find it contains the debit card and PIN for Khalid Almihdhar’s First Union Bank account, which has a balance of $9,838.31. [MSNBC, 12/11/2001; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 75 ; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 76 ]
Atta, Alshehhi, and Alshehri also call al-Hawsawi at this time to give him the numbers for the money they are sending. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 10 ] Although al-Hawsawi admits receiving this money in a substitution for testimony at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006 and again at a Guantanamo Bay hearing (see March 21, 2007), some detainees are apparently subjected to torture, which has led some to doubt the reliability and validity of their statements (see June 16, 2004). [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 10 ; US department of Defense, 3/21/2007 ] Hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar stay in a motel near a fundamentalist storefront mosque in Laurel, Maryland. The hijackers drop off two bags at the mosque, to which they attach a note stating: “gift for the brothers.” The FBI will recover the bags one day after the 9/11. An FBI document will identify the mosque at the Ayah Islamic Center, also known as the Ayah Dawah mosque. According to the 9/11 Commission, the bags contain “fruit, clothing, flight logs, and various other materials.” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 53 ] The FBI will later reveal that the bags contain pilot log books, receipts, and other evidence documenting the brief flight training that Alhazmi and Almihdhar underwent in San Diego in early 2000. It is unclear why they would have kept the receipts, some mentioning their names, for over a year and then left them at a mosque to be found. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 273, 295 ] After 9/11, the FBI will investigate the mosque, asking people if they recognized any of the hijackers. They will determine the imam, Said Rageah, worked part-time raising money for the Global Relief Foundation. Shortly after 9/11, the US will declare this charity a terrorism financier and shut it down. The FBI will investigate him for over a year but ultimately will not find any link to the 9/1 attacks. [Washington Post, 1/6/2002; Newsweek, 9/30/2002; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 53 ] Newsweek will later ask rhetorically, “Who are these mysterious brothers the hijackers left behind when they immolated themselves on September 11? Was that just the usual endearing term that fellow Muslims use for each other? Or is there a deeper connection?” [Newsweek, 9/30/2002]  One page of a torn up 757 cockpit poster used by the hijackers. It was found in a trash compactor at the Days Inn, near the Newark Airport. [Source: FBI]Investigators find a remarkable number of possessions left behind by the hijackers:
Two of Mohamed Atta’s bags are found on 9/11. They contain a handheld electronic flight computer, a simulator procedures manual for Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft, two videotapes relating to “air tours” of the Boeing 757 and 747 aircraft, a slide-rule flight calculator, a copy of the Koran, Atta’s passport, his will, his international driver’s license, a religious cassette tape, airline uniforms, a letter of recommendation, “education related documentation” and a note (see September 28, 2001) to other hijackers on how to mentally prepare for the hijacking. [Sydney Morning Herald, 9/15/2001; Boston Globe, 9/18/2001; Independent, 9/29/2001; Associated Press, 10/5/2001]
Marwan Alshehhi’s rental car is discovered at Boston’s Logan Airport containing an Arabic language flight manual, a pass giving access to restricted areas at the airport, documents containing a name on the passenger list of one of the flights, and the names of other suspects. The name of the flight school where Atta and Alshehhi studied, Huffman Aviation, is also found in the car. [Los Angeles Times, 9/13/2001]
A car registered to Nawaf Alhazmi is found at Washington’s Dulles Airport on September 12. This is the same car he bought in San Diego in early 2000 (see March 25, 2000). Inside is a copy of Atta’s letter to the other hijackers, a cashier’s check made out to a flight school in Phoenix, four drawings of the cockpit of a 757 jet, a box cutter-type knife, maps of Washington and New York, and a page with notes and phone numbers. [Arizona Daily Star, 9/28/2001; Cox News Service, 10/21/2001; Die Zeit (Hamburg), 10/1/2002] The name and phone number of Osama Awadallah, a friend of Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar in San Diego, is also found on a scrap of paper in the car. [CNN, 2/1/2002]
A rental car is found in an airport parking lot in Portland, Maine. Investigators are able to collect fingerprints and hair samples for DNA analysis. [Portland Press Herald, 10/14/2001]
A Boston hotel room contains airplane and train schedules. [Sydney Morning Herald, 9/15/2001]
FBI agents carry out numerous garbage bags of evidence from a Florida apartment where Saeed Alghamdi lived. [CNN, 9/17/2001]
Two days before 9/11, a hotel owner in Deerfield Beach, Florida, finds a box cutter left in a hotel room used by Marwan Alshehhi and two unidentified men. The owner checks the nearby trash and finds a duffel bag containing Boeing 757 manuals, three illustrated martial arts books, an 8-inch stack of East Coast flight maps, a three-ring binder full of handwritten notes, an English-German dictionary, an airplane fuel tester, and a protractor. The FBI seizes all the items when they are notified on September 12 (except the binder of notes, which the owner apparently threw away). [Miami Herald, 9/16/2001; Associated Press, 9/16/2001]
In an apartment rented by Ziad Jarrah and Ahmed Alhaznawi, the FBI finds a notebook, videotape, and photocopies of their passports. [Miami Herald, 9/15/2001]
In a bar the night before 9/11, after making predictions of a attack on America the next day, the hijackers leave a business card and a copy of the Koran at the bar. The FBI also recovers the credit card receipts from when they paid for their drinks and lap dances. [Associated Press, 9/14/2001]
A September 13 security sweep of Boston airport’s parking garage uncovers items left behind by the hijackers: a box cutter, a pamphlet written in Arabic, and a credit card. [Washington Post, 9/16/2001]
A few hours after the attacks, suicide notes that some of the hijackers wrote to their parents are found in New York. Credit card receipts showing that some of the hijackers paid for flight training in the US are also found. [Los Angeles Times, 9/13/2001]
A FedEx bill is found in a trash can at the Comfort Inn in Portland, Maine, where Atta stayed the night before 9/11. The bill leads to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, allowing investigators to determine much of the funding for 9/11. [Newsweek, 11/11/2001; London Times, 12/1/2001]
A bag hijackers Alhazmi and Almihdhar left at a mosque in Laurel, Maryland, is found on September 12. The bag contains flight logs and even receipts from flight schools from San Diego the year before (see September 9, 2001).
The hijackers past whereabouts can even be tracked by their pizza purchases. An expert points out: “Most people pay cash for pizza. These [hijackers] paid with a credit card. That was an odd thing.” [San Diego Union-Tribune, 9/3/2002] “In the end, they left a curiously obvious trail—from martial arts manuals, maps, a Koran, Internet and credit card fingerprints. Maybe they were sloppy, maybe they did not care, maybe it was a gesture of contempt of a culture they considered weak and corrupt.” [Miami Herald, 9/22/2001] Note The New Yorker’s quote of a former high-level intelligence official: “Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the FBI to chase” (see Late September 2001). [New Yorker, 10/8/2001]
Entity Tags: Marwan Alshehhi, Huffman Aviation, Ahmed Alhaznawi, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mohamed Atta, Saeed Alghamdi, Osama Awadallah, Washington Dulles International Airport, Ziad Jarrah, Nawaf Alhazmi Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline
  The Saudi passport of Saeed Alghamdi, said to be discovered in the wreckage of Flight 93. [Source: FBI]According to the 9/11 Commission, the passports of two hijackers are discovered in the wreckage of Flight 93. One passport, belonging to Saeed Alghamdi, is damaged but still readable. The other passport, belonging to Ziad Jarrah, is burned most of the way through, but part of his photograph is still visible. In addition, the passport of hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari is recovered because apparently it was put in Mohamed Atta’s luggage and the luggage did not get put on the flight Alomari and Atta were hijacking before it took off (see September 11-13, 2001). The recovery of these passports will not be made public at the time and will only be mentioned in passing in 2004 by the 9/11 Commission. A fourth passport, that of Satam Al Suqami, was also recovered on a street near the WTC. That did become immediate news and caused skepticism by many who wondered how a paper document could survive such a crash (see After 8:46 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 1/26/2004]
Mohamed Abdi, a 44-year-old Somali immigrant whose phone number was found in a car belonging to one the 9/11 hijackers, is detained without bail in Alexandria, Va. On September 12, 2001, FBI investigators discovered a car registered to 9/11 hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi at Dulles Airport (see September 11-13, 2001). In the car, they found a Washington-area map with the name “Mohumad” and a Virginia phone number belonging to Mohamed Abdi. At the court hearing, an FBI investigator says that Abdi has not explained the finding and is suspected of being linked to the hijackers. FBI Special Agent Kevin W. Ashby also testifies that an article on Ahmed Ressam was found in Abdi’s clothing. Ressam was convicted of trying to bomb Los Angeles Airport in 2000 (see December 14, 1999). According to press reports, Abdi is not cooperating with police. He came to the United States in 1993 as a refugee. He later brought his wife and four children to the US and obtained US citizenship. Shortly after his arrival, Abdi worked for Caterair, a food service company at Reagan National Airport. At the time of his arrest, Abdi had been working as a low-paid security guard for Burns Security for seven years. Burns does not provide airport security services, however, a Burns subsidiary called Globe Aviation Services provides screening services at several US airports, including the American Airlines concourse at Boston’s Logan Airport, from which one of the hijacked flights took off (see October 10, 2001). Abdi, who has had financial difficulties for some time, is charged with check forgery. He is accused of forging his landlord’s signature to obtain a government housing subsidy. No terrorism charges are filed. [US District Court Eastern District of Virginia, 9/23/2001 ; Washington Post, 9/27/2001 ; Human Events, 10/15/2001; Human Events, 10/15/2001] In January 2002, Abdi will receive a four-month sentence for forgery. Any link he may have had with the hijackers will remain unclear. [Washington Post, 1/12/2002] The text of a handwritten, five-page document found in Mohamed Atta’s luggage is made public. [Observer, 9/30/2001] The next day, the Independent strongly questions if the note is genuine. It points out the “note suggests an almost Christian view of what the hijackers might have felt” and is filled with “weird” comments that Muslims would never say, such as “the time of fun and waste is gone.” If the note “is genuine, then the [hijackers] believed in a very exclusive version of Islam—or were surprisingly unfamiliar with their religion.” [Independent, 9/29/2001] Another copy of the document was discovered in a vehicle parked by a Flight 77 hijacker at Washington’s Dulles airport. A third copy of essentially the same document was found in the wreckage of Flight 93. Therefore, the letter neatly ties most of the hijackers together. [CBS News, 9/28/2001] The Guardian says, “The finds are certainly very fortunate, though some might think them a little too fortunate.” [Guardian, 10/1/2001] Interestingly, an FBI affidavit of the contents of Atta’s baggage written on September 14, 2001, and released on October 4 fails to mention the how-to letter. Journalist Seymour Hersh will write in the New Yorker in late September 2001, “After more than two weeks of around-the-clock investigation into the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the American intelligence community remains confused, divided, and unsure about how the terrorists operated, how many there were, and what they might do next. It was that lack of solid information, government officials told me, that was the key factor behind the Bush Administration’s decision last week not to issue a promised white paper listing the evidence linking Osama bin Laden’s organization to the attacks” (see September 23-24, 2001). An unnamed senior official tells Hersh, “One day we’ll know, but at the moment we don’t know.” Hersh further reports, “It is widely believed that the terrorists had a support team, and the fact that the FBI has been unable to track down fellow-conspirators who were left behind in the United States is seen as further evidence of careful planning. ‘Look,’ one person familiar with the investigation said. ‘If it were as simple and straightforward as a lucky one-off oddball operation, then the seeds of confusion would not have been sown as they were.’” The hijackers left a surprisingly obvious trail of clues, even regularly paying for delivered pizzas using credit cards in their own name (see September 11-13, 2001). Hersh further reports, “Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists’ identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, ‘Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the FBI to chase.’” [New Yorker, 10/8/2001] Many newspaper reports in late September 2001 indicate doubt over the identities of many hijackers (see September 16-23, 2001). The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry’s 2003 report will strongly suggest that the hijackers at least had numerous accomplices in the US (see July 24, 2003). But the 9/11 Commission’s 2004 report will downplay any suggestions of US accomplices and will indicate no doubts about the hijackers’ identities. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 231, 238-9]
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