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Satam Al Suqami’s remarkably undamaged passport, marked and wrapped in plastic. It was shown as evidence in the 2006 Zacarias Moussaoui trial. [Source: FBI]It is reported that the passport of hijacker Satam Al Suqami has been found a few blocks from the World Trade Center. [ABC News, 9/12/2001; Associated Press, 9/16/2001; ABC News, 9/16/2001] Barry Mawn, the director of the FBI’s New York office, says police and FBI found it during a “grid search” of the area. [CNN, 9/18/2001] However a senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission later claims it was actually discovered by a passerby and given to an NYPD detective, “shortly before the World Trade Center towers collapsed.” [9/11 Commission, 1/26/2004] The Guardian says, “The idea that Mohamed Atta’s passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged [tests] the credulity of the staunchest supporter of the FBI’s crackdown on terrorism.” [Guardian, 3/19/2002] (Note that, as in this Guardian account, the passport is frequently mistakenly referred to as Atta’s passport.)
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mohamed Atta, World Trade Center, Barry Mawn, Satam Al Suqami
Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline
Category Tags: Other 9/11 Hijackers, All Day of 9/11 Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation, Key Hijacker Events
A director at Boston’s Logan Airport receives the passenger manifests for Flight 11 and Flight 175, and reportedly is able to quickly single out the names of the five hijackers on each of these flights. Ed Freni, the director of aviation operations at Logan, had phoned his contacts at American and United Airlines who are based at the airport roughly around 9:00-9:15. He had requested the manifests for the two hijacked planes that took off from there (see (9:00 a.m.-9:15 a.m.) September 11, 2001). Several pages with names listed in long columns now roll out of the fax machine in the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) aviation office at Logan, where Freni recently arrived. Freni looks over the manifest for Flight 11. Aware that Arab men attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, he searches for any Arabic names. According to author Tom Murphy, he circles the names of the five men later accused of being the plane’s hijackers: “In 2A and 2B, he circled two, both W. Alshehri. In 8D, M. Atta, and 8G, A. Alomari. In 10B, he circled S. Al Suqami.” None of the names of the other individuals on the plane appear suspicious to him. Freni then looks over the manifest for Flight 175. Again, according to Murphy, he singles out the names of the men later accused of being the plane’s hijackers: “He circled F. Alquadibanihammad [presumably Fayez Ahmed Banihammad], A. Alghamdi, H. Alghamdi, M. Alshehri, and M. Alshehhi.” Freni asks John Duval, Logan’s deputy director of operations who is with him in the aviation office, “FBI here yet?” Duval replies, “They’re on the way over from downtown.” Freni says, “Tell ‘em we got their guys.” [Murphy, 2006, pp. 34-36] However, at 10:59 a.m., the FBI’s Chicago command post will receive a copy of the manifest for Flight 175, and, according to an FBI document, this will have six Muslim names on it—one more than Freni reportedly singles out. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/12/2001 ] Presumably the sixth Muslim name is that of Touri Bolourchi, a nurse originally from Iran. [New York Times, 6/30/2002] There were also at least another two passengers on Flight 11 with names that might appear to be Arabic, yet that Freni apparently does not single out: Waleed Iskandar was a Lebanese management consultant. [Palo Alto Weekly, 12/12/2001; Associated Press, 9/11/2002] And Rahma Salie was an IT consultant of Sri Lankan descent. [Independent, 10/11/2001; New York Times, 7/14/2002]
Entity Tags: Ed Freni, John Duval
Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Shortly before Flight 77 hits the Pentagon, Washington’s Dulles Airport, from where it had departed, is “locked down” by the FAA, and many FBI and INS agents arrive, but their behavior is considered odd. Ed Nelson, a security manager at the airport, thinks something is not “adding up,” due to the unusual questions his employees are being asked: “They were not asking about the hijackers—they were focusing on what my screeners might have done wrong. It was as if they were working off a script.” FBI agents will later confirm this, and an FBI supervisor will say: “The orders came from headquarters through the local Washington-area FBI field offices and the Joint Task Force on Terrorism. The teams of agents were told to ‘get the screeners to admit they had violated FAA recommended procedures.’” [Trento and Trento, 2006, pp. 36]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ed Nelson
Royce Lamberth, head of the FISA court which grants warrants for intelligence cases, grants five warrantless surveillance requests minutes after the Pentagon attack. Lamberth will later report being stuck in a carpool lane near the Pentagon when it is hit. With his car enveloped in smoke, he calls US marshals to help him get to his office. Lamberth will later say that by the time officers reached him, “I had approved five FISA coverages [warrants] on my cellphone.” [Associated Press, 6/24/2007] Presumably this represents the start of a flurry of surveillance activity in response to the 9/11 attacks, but it is not known who was to be monitored or how their names were learned and acted on so quickly.
Entity Tags: Royce Lamberth
Logo of the FBI’s National Capital Response Squad. [Source: FBI]Within five minutes of the Pentagon being hit, the first group from the FBI’s National Capital Response Squad arrives there. Due to this being a terrorist attack, the Pentagon and its grounds are immediately declared a federal crime scene. Under the terms of a 1995 presidential directive, this makes them the exclusive responsibility of the FBI. The FBI immediately begins collecting evidence and is also responsible for recovering bodies. Its agents are able to confiscate security videos from a nearby gas station within minutes of the crash (see (After 9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001). More than 700 FBI agents, assisted by hundreds of individuals from other organizations, will participate in the recovery operation. [US President, 6/21/1995; Washington Times, 9/12/2001; US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A-7, A-23, C-1, C-54]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Pentagon
Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation, Pentagon
Shortly after arriving at Washington’s Dulles Airport, from which Flight 77 took off, the FBI confiscates a security tape from a checkpoint through which the hijackers passed before boarding the plane. Airport security manager Ed Nelson will later say: “They pulled the tape right away.… They brought me to look at it. They went right to the first hijacker on the tape and identified him. They knew who the hijackers were out of hundreds of people going through the checkpoints. They would go ‘roll and stop it’ and showed me each of the hijackers.… It boggles my mind that they had already had the hijackers identified.… Both metal detectors were open at that time, and lots of traffic was moving through. So picking people out is hard.… I wanted to know how they had that kind of information. So fast. It didn’t make sense to me.” [Trento and Trento, 2006, pp. 37] Some of the hijackers are identified on the passenger manifests around this time (see (9:59 a.m.) September 11, 2001), and this knowledge is disseminated in the US intelligence community (see (After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001 and (11:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
Entity Tags: Ed Nelson, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Hani Hanjour, Other 9/11 Hijackers, All Day of 9/11 Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Terri Rizzuto. [Source: ReclaimingTheSky.com]A United Airlines manager finds that a gate agent has already singled out boarding passes belonging to four suspicious passengers who were on Flight 93. Terri Rizzuto is the United Airlines station manager at Newark Airport, from where Flight 93 departed. Some time after hearing that this plane has crashed, she speaks on the phone with the FBI, which is requesting the plane’s manifest and its Passenger Name Record (PNR). After arranging permission to release these, she goes to Gate 17, from where she knows Flight 93 departed, wanting to talk to her staff there. When she arrives, a supervisor hands her four boarding passes. The supervisor tells her they are “The men, who did this maybe,” and points her toward one of the gate agents who had boarded the passengers onto the flight. When Rizzuto asks the gate agent, “How do you know?” he replies: “They were too well-dressed. Too well-dressed for that early in the morning. And their muscles rippled below their suits.… [A]nd their eyes.” [Murphy, 2006, pp. 71-73] However, this report of men with rippling muscles contradicts the 9/11 Commission’s description of the so-called “muscle” hijackers (i.e. the non-pilot hijackers) on the four targeted planes: They “were not physically imposing,” with the majority of them being “slender in build.” [9/11 Commission, 6/16/2004]
Entity Tags: Terri Rizzuto
Wallace Miller. [Source: Steve Mellon / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]Wallace Miller, the coroner of Somerset County, is one of the first people to arrive at the Flight 93 crash scene. However, he is surprised by the absence of human remains there. He later says, “If you didn’t know, you would have thought no one was on the plane. You would have thought they dropped them off somewhere.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 217] The only recognizable body part he sees is a piece of spinal cord with five vertebrae attached. He will later tell Australian newspaper The Age, “I’ve seen a lot of highway fatalities where there’s fragmentation. The interesting thing about this particular case is that I haven’t, to this day, 11 months later, seen any single drop of blood. Not a drop.” [Age (Melbourne), 9/9/2002] Dave Fox, a former firefighter, also arrives early at the crash scene, but sees just three chunks of human tissue. He says, “You knew there were people there, but you couldn’t see them.” [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/11/2002] Yet, in the following weeks, hundreds of searchers are able to find about 1,500 scorched human tissue samples, weighing less than 600 pounds—approximately eight percent of the total body mass on Flight 93. Months after 9/11, more remains are found in a secluded cabin, several hundred yards from the crash site. [Washington Post, 5/12/2002]
Entity Tags: Dave Fox, Wallace Miller
Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, FBI 9/11 Investigation
A few hours after the attacks, German intelligence intercepts a phone conversation between followers of bin Laden that leads the FBI to search frantically for two more teams of suicide hijackers, according to US and German officials. The Germans overhear the operatives refer to “the 30 people traveling for the operation.” The FBI scours flight manifests and any other clues for more conspirators still at large. [New York Times, 9/29/2001] Two days later, authorities claim to have identified teams of as many as 50 infiltrators who supported or carried out the strikes. About 40 are accounted for as dead or in custody; ten are missing. They also believe a total of 27 suspected operatives received some form of pilot training. This corresponds with many analyses that the attacks required a large support network. [Los Angeles Times, 9/13/2001] Yet there is no evidence that any accomplices in the US shortly before 9/11 have since been arrested or charged.
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Germany
One day after 9/11, the New York Times will report that FBI agents in Florida investigating the hijackers quickly “descended on flight schools, neighborhoods and restaurants in pursuit of leads.” At one flight school, “students said investigators were there within hours of Tuesday’s attacks.” [New York Times, 9/13/2001] Also on September 12, the Times will report, “Authorities said they had also identified accomplices in several cities who had helped plan and execute Tuesday’s attacks. Officials said they knew who these people were and important biographical details about many of them. They prepared biographies of each identified member of the hijack teams, and began tracing the recent movements of the men.” [New York Times, 9/13/2001] In September 2002, 9/11 victim’s relative Kristen Breitweiser, testifying before the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, will cite these news reports and will ask, “How did the FBI know exactly where to go only a few hours after the attacks? How did they know which neighborhoods, which flight schools and which restaurants to investigate so soon in the case?… How are complete biographies of the terrorists, and their accomplices, created in such short time? Did our intelligence agencies already have open files on these men? Were they already investigating them? Could the attacks of September 11th been prevented?” [US Congress, 9/18/2002] In at least some cases, it appears that US intelligence did quickly access existing files on the hijackers. The Washington Post reports, “In the hours after Tuesday’s bombings, investigators searched their files on [Satam] Al Suqami and [Ahmed] Alghamdi, noted the pair’s ties to [Nabil] al-Marabh and launched a hunt for him.” A top Customs official claims that by checking flight manifests and comparing them with other information such as watch lists, he is able to determine the names of all 19 hijackers by 11:00 a.m.(see (11:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Washington Post, 9/21/2001]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ahmed Alghamdi, Satam Al Suqami, Kristen Breitweiser, Nabil al-Marabh
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, All Day of 9/11 Events
Personnel from several agencies searching for evidence at the Pentagon. [Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation]Beginning shortly before midday on September 11, 2001, and continuing until September 12, the FBI conducts a careful search across the grounds of the Pentagon, looking for remnants of the aircraft that hit the building. [PBS, 9/12/2001; Washington Post, 9/12/2001; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 159] FBI Special Agent Tom O’Connor is in charge of the initial evidence recovery operation at the Pentagon. His first priority is to locate and gather all the airplane parts and other pieces of evidence from the lawn on the west side of the building. He sends out all available agents to conduct a grid search. The lawn is divided into quadrants, and then agents walk back and forth, sticking a small flag near any evidence they find, getting the evidence photographed in its place, and then scooping it into a bag. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 180] Arlington police officers, military personnel, and others also participate in the search. [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 159] They also look for evidence across grass and roadways several hundred yards from the Pentagon. [PBS, 9/12/2001] Some pieces of the aircraft that hit the Pentagon are found nearly 1,000 feet away from the building, on the other side of Washington Boulevard. Thousands of tiny pieces of aluminum have also carried forward over the Pentagon, into its center courtyard. Other pieces of debris landed on its roof, along with body parts from at least one victim. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 29] According to the Defense Department’s book about the Pentagon attack, the searchers find “many scraps and a few personal items widely scattered on the grass and heliport. Plane remnants varied from half-dollar size to a few feet long.” [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 159] Authors Patrick Creed and Rick Newman will describe: “Agents found what looked like a big Plexiglas windowpane on the lawn, which might have been part of an airplane window, except it was too big.… Somebody suggested it could be one of the blast-proof windows from the Pentagon, somehow blown 500 feet from the building.” [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 180]
Entity Tags: Tom O’Connor, Arlington County Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Pentagon, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Garrett McKenzie. [Source: Rudi Williams]Photographers who are taking pictures at the Pentagon, to document the scene of the attack there in as close as possible to its original state, are told to limit what evidence they photograph. FBI Special Agent Tom O’Connor—who is in charge of the initial evidence recovery operation at the Pentagon—and his superiors have put out the word that it is unnecessary to document every piece of the airplane. This is because, reportedly, “the smaller fragments didn’t prove anything, except that there was an airplane there, which was obvious enough from other evidence.” FBI Special Agent Garrett McKenzie, who is coordinating the effort to photograph evidence at the Pentagon, pulls together a dozen photographers for a briefing. He instructs them: “We don’t need to photograph all the plane parts, only unique airplane parts or something specific. Like the pilot’s yoke, or anything with part of a serial number on it. If we have to prove what kind of plane this was, the serial numbers will be what we need.” [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 181-183]
Entity Tags: Tom O’Connor, Garrett McKenzie
The Navy Annex, located next to the Virginia State Police Barracks. [Source: Arlington County After-Action Report]The FBI establishes a command post for its response to the Pentagon attack at the Virginia State Police Barracks, overlooking the Pentagon. [Fire Engineering, 11/2002] Around midday, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Robert Blecksmith arrived at the Pentagon and took over from Special Agent Chris Combs as the FBI’s on scene commander. He had quickly decided that the area around the Arlington County Fire Department’s incident command post by the Pentagon was too crowded and lacked support facilities. He therefore decides it will be safer for the FBI to carry out its operations at the Virginia State Police Barracks, located next to the Navy Annex, a few hundred yards from the Pentagon. Along with Combs, Blecksmith establishes the FBI’s command post there, and starts moving the FBI up to it. The two men will spend most of the afternoon at the barracks, where they work on establishing a Joint Operations Center (JOC) at nearby Fort Myer. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A23 and C50; Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 178] The JOC will open early the following morning (see September 12, 2001). [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 161]
Entity Tags: Chris Combs, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert Blecksmith
Due to the chaos and gridlock resulting from the morning’s attacks, the FBI is hampered in mobilizing its investigative operation at the Pentagon. Because the Pentagon is a crime scene, it is the FBI’s job to gather and document every piece of evidence there. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 177] Special Agent Chris Combs, the FBI’s representative at the crash site, has been setting up the FBI operation since arriving at 9:49 a.m. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A20 and 1-1; Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 178] Since before 10:00 a.m., the bureau’s evidence recovery team has been arriving. But although every available agent has been paged, many are stuck in traffic, and it will take several hours before the entire FBI contingent makes it to the Pentagon. The FBI also has a fleet of sophisticated command vehicles and helicopters, plus other specialized equipment. But even though the crash site is within the “FBI’s backyard,” according to authors Patrick Creed and Rick Newman, by around 12:15 p.m. none of this has arrived yet. The bureau’s rapid-deployment gear, which includes everything needed to gather and document evidence, is stored in a warehouse in Washington, DC. But with traffic in the region at a standstill, it is almost impossible to get this through the streets to the Pentagon. Chris Combs asks his boss at the FBI’s Washington field office if any helicopters are available to get equipment to the Pentagon quickly. But several choppers at the FBI facility in Quantico, just 30 miles south of the Pentagon, are reserved for specific duties during government emergencies and are currently locked down. And according to Creed and Newman, other government helicopters the bureau relies upon for backup are tied up, though what they are being used for is unstated. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A22; Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 177-179] Furthermore, NBC News has reported that the FBI’s top teams have been away from Washington for the last two days for a major training exercise in California (see 10:03 a.m. September 11, 2001). This means about 50 personnel, plus helicopters and equipment, are currently out of place and unavailable. [NBC 4, 9/11/2001]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Chris Combs
Deena Burnett is visited at her home in San Ramon, California, by three FBI agents, and questioned about the calls she received from her husband, Tom Burnett, who was a passenger on Flight 93. Deena has now learned of the plane crashing in Pennsylvania, and a police officer staying with her informed her that this was her husband’s plane. The FBI agents spend over an hour with Deena, asking her about her husband and what he’d said in his four calls from Flight 93. [Burnett and Giombetti, 2006, pp. 71-72 and 74-75] She describes to them how Tom called her using his cell phone and told her his flight had been hijacked. In his final call he’d described how a group of the passengers was going to “do something.” She says her husband was a former college football player and very intelligent, so if he’d concluded he was going to die, he would have taken action. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/11/2001 ] Deena remembers that she’d taken notes, writing down the details of her husband’s calls. But she does not want the agents to have these, saying, “You wouldn’t be able to read it anyway.” They do not take the notes with them when they leave. They will return later in the day and tell Deena specifically not to say anything to anyone—especially the media—about her cell phone conversations with her husband, because it is part of their investigation. [Burnett and Giombetti, 2006, pp. 75 and 81]
Entity Tags: Tom Burnett, Deena Burnett, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, Alleged Passenger Phone Calls, FBI 9/11 Investigation
The FBI interviews Eric Gill, a security guard at Dulles Airport who may have encountered some of the 9/11 hijackers attempting to access aircraft the night before 9/11 (see Around 8:15 p.m. September 10, 2001). Gill tells the FBI his story, but the FBI fails to show him a video it has found of the hijackers passing through an airport security checkpoint on 9/11, even though it is shown to all his colleagues, except the partner he was on duty with when he saw the hijackers. The FBI also obtains video of two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdhar and Salem Alhazmi, at Dulles on the day he says he saw another two of them, Nawaf Alhazmi and Marwan Alshehhi, but does not show this video to him and this video will not be publicly mentioned until 2008. It is unclear what the FBI does with logs for a door through which Gill says the hijackers would have passed, but they are not shown to Gill. Two days later, the FBI shows him poor quality photocopied pictures of the hijackers and Gill identifies two of them as the people he saw on September 10, but the FBI then loses interest in him, as they think one of the men he identifies hijacked a plane from Boston, not Dulles. Another man who may have seen the hijackers the night before 9/11, Khalid Mahmoud, is taken away by the INS and does not return, presumably because he has been deported. Gill will speak to a 9/11 Commission staffer on the telephone about 18 months later, but nothing will come of this. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 281 ; Trento and Trento, 2006, pp. 38-40, 43-5]
Entity Tags: Marwan Alshehhi, Khalid Mahmoud, Eric Gill, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, All Day of 9/11 Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation
On September 11—after the 9/11 attacks are over—the New York FBI office learns that one of the hijackers was Khalid Almihdhar. One of these FBI agents had attempted to get permission to search for Almihdhar in late August, but was not allowed to do so. He wrote an e-mail on August 28 predicting that “someday someone will die… the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain ‘problems.’”(see August 29, 2001). He later testifies that upon seeing Almihdhar’s name on one of the passenger flight manifests, he angrily yells “This is the same Almihdhar we’ve been talking about for three months!” In an attempt to console him, his boss replies, “We did everything by the book.” Now that this upset agent is allowed to conduct a basic Internet search for Almihdhar that he had been denied permission to conduct before 9/11, he finds the hijacker’s address “within hours.” [Washington Post, 9/21/2002; US Congress, 12/11/2002] The FBI field office in San Diego also had not been notified before 9/11 that Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi had been put on a no-fly watch list on August 24, 2001 (see September 4-5, 2001). Bill Gore, the FBI agent running the San Diego office on this day, later makes reference to that fact that Alhazmi’s correct phone number and address was listed in the San Diego phone book and says,“How [we] could have found these people when we didn’t know we were looking for them? The first place we would have looked is the phone book…. I submit to you we would have found them.” [US Congress, 12/11/2002]
Entity Tags: Khalid Almihdhar, Bill Gore, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Nawaf Alhazmi
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Al-Qaeda Malaysia Summit, Key Hijacker Events, CIA Hiding Alhazmi & Almihdhar, Search for Alhazmi/ Almihdhar in US, All Day of 9/11 Events
The FBI’s Minneapolis office asks for permission to interview Zacarias Moussaoui a few hours after the end of the 9/11 attacks, but permission is denied, apparently on the grounds that there is no emergency. On 9/11, the office’s counsel, Coleen Rowley, seeks permission from the Acting US Attorney to question Moussaoui about whether al-Qaeda has any further plans to hijack airliners or otherwise attack the US. The next day she asks again; this time the request is sent to the Justice Department. Such questioning would not usually be permitted, but Rowley argues that it should be allowed under a public safety exception. However, permission is denied and Rowley is told that the emergency is over so the public safety exception does not apply. Rowley will later comment: “We were so flabbergasted about the fact we were told no public safety emergency existed just hours after the attacks that my boss advised me to document it in a memo which became the first document in the legal subfile of the FBI’s ‘Penttbom’ case.” [Huffington Post, 5/2/2007] Some sources will suggest that Moussaoui was to be part of a second wave of attacks (see September 5, 2002). He is also an associate of shoe bomber Richard Reid, who will attempt to blow up an airliner later this year (see Mid-2000-December 9, 2000 and December 22, 2001).
Entity Tags: FBI Minnesota field office, Coleen Rowley, Zacarias Moussaoui, US Department of Justice
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, All Day of 9/11 Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation, 2001 Attempted Shoe Bombing
Later in the day, weapons are found planted on board three other US airplanes. A US official says of the hijackings: “These look like inside jobs.” Time magazine reports, “Sources tell Time that US officials are investigating whether the hijackers had accomplices deep inside the airports’ ‘secure’ areas.” [Time, 9/22/2001] Penetrating airport security does not appear to have been that difficult: Argenbright, the company in charge of security at all the airports used by the 9/11 hijackers, had virtually no security check on any of their employees, and even hired criminals and illegal immigrants. Security appears to have particularly abysmal at Boston’s Logan Airport, even after 9/11. [Boston Globe, 10/1/2001; CNN, 10/12/2001]
Entity Tags: Logan Airport, Argenbright
It is reported that Attorney General Ashcroft has told members of Congress that there were three to five hijackers on each plane armed only with knives. [CNN, 9/12/2001]
Entity Tags: John Ashcroft
Susan Mcelwain, who lives two miles from the Flight 93 crash site, had seen a small jet plane flying very low overhead as she was driving home. She later recalls that it had been “heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down.” But it was only later in the afternoon, after returning home and turning on the TV, that she’d realized what she’d seen was connected to the attacks in New York and Washington. While she was confused that a Boeing 757—not a small jet plane—was being reported as having gone down near where she’d been, she’d then realized that the small plane was flying in a different direction to that being described for Flight 93. So she got her husband to tell the police about what she’d witnessed. Consequently, late in the evening, the FBI turns up to talk to her about it. Yet, as Mcelwain later recalls, “They did not want my story.” They keep asking her how big the plane she’d seen was. When she tells them it was small, not much bigger than her van, one of the agents tells her, “You don’t know what a 757 looks like.” She retorts, “Don’t be condescending towards me. If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine, but I thought I should report what I saw. You ought to know there was something else in the air at the same time this was going on. We want to make sure it was ours and not somebody else’s.” After this, she will recall, the agent “did seem to get a little nicer. Told me that it was a white Learjet. Somebody was taking pictures. And I said, ‘Before the crash?’ and he says, ‘Well, we’ve got to go,’ and that was the end of it.” [Bergen Record, 9/14/2001; Mirror, 9/12/2002; Lappe and Marshall, 2004, pp. 38-40] Numerous other witnesses also saw a small jet plane flying above the crash site around the time Flight 93 reportedly went down (see (Before and After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001).
Entity Tags: Susan Mcelwain, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: All Day of 9/11 Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation, Shanksville, Pennsylvania
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
Category Tags: Key Hijacker Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation, Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Marwan Alshehhi, Mohamed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Other 9/11 Hijackers
It is later reported that FBI officials believe that a second grouping or cell of “perhaps 20 al-Qaeda terrorists [are] in the United States on Sept. 11 to carry out another attack. Members of this second cell, one official [says], apparently [abandon] apartments they… rented in Paterson, New Jersey, and Fairfax, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., after Sept. 11, leaving rented furniture and other possessions behind in their haste.” [St. Paul Pioneer Press, 10/7/2002] Another article notes, “Police always have had concerns about sleeper agents in the [Brooklyn, New York] area. They particularly were concerned by a story… from several NYPD sources about an abandoned rental car that was parked in front of a mosque only a few blocks from New Utrecht. The car had been rented under the phony name ‘Bomkr’ from Logan International Airport in Boston shortly before the attacks. Investigators thought the name sounded a lot like ‘bomb car.’ The anonymous party rented several other cars from Logan, all of which either have disappeared or been abandoned. Police suspect the cars were used by al-Qaeda operatives to return to their home bases after the attacks.” [Insight, 9/10/2002]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, Internal US Security After 9/11
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]
Entity Tags: Ziad Jarrah, Abdulaziz Alomari, Saeed Alghamdi, Satam Al Suqami
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation
According to the New York Post, “Credit cards belonging to the suicide hijackers continued to be used after the Sept. 11 attacks—indicating associates of the terrorists remained in the United States weeks after the kamikaze strikes, authorities said…” The cards are used at least until around the start of October 2001. An unnamed official says, “We believe there are additional people out there. Many of the closest associates got out of the country early on, but we also believe there are a number of people here we’re still looking at.” The hijackers had more than 100 credit cards in their own names, variations of their names, or by using false identities. The credit card transactions are recorded in Florida, New Jersey, and Maryland. While officials believe it is possible that at least some of the credit cards may have been stolen and used by people not connected to the hijackers. In some cases, the credit card use helps investigators detain associates of the hijackers. [New York Post, 10/17/2001] An October 2001 FBI timeline of hijacker movements made public in 2008 will note some of these credit card uses. For instance, a credit card jointly owned by hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi is used twice on September 15, and a credit card owned by hijacker Fayez Ahmed Banihammad is used on September 17. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/2001, pp. 296 ] What becomes of these detained people is not clear, because use of hijacker credit cards is not asserted for anyone later charged or released by US authorities. An account six months later will suggest that investigators have only connected 27 credit cards to the hijackers, not more than 100. [CNN, 5/22/2002]
Entity Tags: Marwan Alshehhi, Mohamed Atta, Fayez Ahmed Banihammad
A number of witnesses who claim they saw Mohamed Atta living in Venice, Florida in early 2001 later allege that, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, they are intimidated by the FBI and told to keep quiet about what they knew. Amanda Keller, who claims to have lived with Atta during early 2001 (see (February-April 2001)), later says that, even after she moved away from Venice, FBI agents called her every other day for several months after the attacks. She tells investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker about “intimidation by the FBI” that she suffered, adding, “They told me not to talk to anybody, to keep my mouth shut.” Stephanie Frederickson, who remembers Keller and Atta living next door to her in the Sandpiper Apartments in Venice, later recalls, “At first, right after the attack, [the FBI] told me I must have been mistaken in my identification. Or they would insinuate that I was lying. Finally they stopped trying to get me to change my story, and just stopped by once a week to make sure I hadn’t been talking to anyone. Who was I going to tell? Most everyone around here already knew.” Charles Grapentine, the manager of the Sandpiper Apartments, also confirms Atta having lived with Keller. He says that, after 9/11, the FBI “called me a liar, and told me to keep my mouth shut.” [Hopsicker, 2004, pp. 62-63, 65 and 88-89] According to the FBI’s account of events, Atta had left Venice by late December 2000 or early January 2001. Its account makes no mention of him returning there later. [US Congress, 9/26/2002] A former manager at Huffman Aviation, the Venice flight school attended by Atta in late 2000 (see July 6-December 19, 2000), also later alleges that the FBI intimidated him and told him to keep quiet. He says the FBI was “outside my house four hours after the attack.” He claims his phones were bugged after 9/11, and adds, “I thought these guys [Atta and his associates] were double agents. Why is that so incriminating?” [Hopsicker, 2004, pp. 149-150]
Entity Tags: Daniel Hopsicker, Charles Grapentine, Mohamed Atta, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Stephanie Frederickson, Amanda Keller
Fort Myer. [Source: US Army]At 6:00 a.m., the FBI opens the Joint Operations Center (JOC) for coordinating the emergency response to the Pentagon attack. The JOC is located in a community center at Fort Myer, an army base 1.5 miles northwest of the Pentagon, and is commanded by FBI Special Agent in Charge Timothy Bereznay. [US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A23 and A28; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 161] The US government’s January 2001 Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan (CONPLAN) allocated to the FBI responsibility for activating a JOC to coordinate the activities of federal departments and agencies in response to terrorist attacks. All the government organizations responding to the Pentagon attack are expected to assign a senior representative with decision-making authority to the JOC. There are 26 such representatives in all. Because many of the responding agencies are unfamiliar with the functions of the JOC, there is initially “considerable confusion” after it opens. [US Government, 1/2001; US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. C49 and C51; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 161] The FBI has been able to set up the JOC particularly quickly as a result of its preparations for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, scheduled to take place in Washington at the end of September (see 8:30 a.m. September 11, 2001). Months previously, the FBI surveyed regional sites and chose Fort Myer as the location to coordinate the law enforcement response to any violent protests at that event. [Guardian, 9/14/2001; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 161]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joint Operations Center, Interagency Domestic Terrorism Concept of Operations Plan, Timothy Bereznay
FBI Special Agent John Adams, who is now in charge of evidence recovery at the Pentagon during the daytime, addresses how the FBI should deal with the physical evidence at the crash site. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 347 and 351] As the Pentagon is a crime scene, the FBI is responsible for collecting and documenting evidence there. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 177] Agents are still carefully gathering together wreckage, but there is an overwhelming amount of it to deal with. Several FBI supervisors convene and discuss what the bureau should be recovering. One of them says every airplane part is significant and needs to be treated as valuable evidence. But Adams counters: “That can’t be. We know what happened here. Do we really need to collect every piece of the airplane?” Adams goes over to some National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) crash experts at the site, who are responsible for determining what happened to Flight 77. When he asks them, “Do you guys want pieces of the plane?” an NTSB official responds: “No, it’s clear what happened here. We don’t need pieces of the wings and stuff like that. But we do need the black boxes.” [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 351-352]
Entity Tags: National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Bureau of Investigation, John S. Adams
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, Other 9/11 Investigations
John McCole [Source: Robson Books]Some gruesome remains are discovered in the World Trade Center ruins: Investigators find a pair of severed hands bound together with plastic handcuffs on a nearby building. They are believed to have belonged to a flight attendant. [Newsday, 9/15/2001] Honorary firefighter Michael Bellone and two other recovery workers discover the body of an attendant from American Airlines Flight 11. Reportedly, the men’s digging efforts reveal “a blue skirt, then one side of a body, and finally a pair of wings still attached to the lapel of a woman’s jacket.” [Swanson, 2003, pp. 140; Daily Standard (Grand Lake), 9/11/2006] Other reports describe the discovery of the body of a flight attendant with her hands bound. Presumably they are referring to the same remains. [Guardian, 9/13/2001; New York Times, 9/15/2001] There are reports of whole rows of seats with passengers in them being found, as well as much of the cockpit of one of the planes, complete with the body of a suspected hijacker. Police cannot confirm these reports. [Ananova, 9/13/2001; Guardian, 9/13/2001; New York Times, 9/15/2001] Fire Lieutenant John McCole sees a body bag with a tag on it saying, “Possible Perp—pilot.” McCole later comments, “I found it pretty amazing that someone’s body could remain so intact after crashing through a skyscraper into the middle of an inferno.” [McCole, 2002, pp. 57] Yet, contradicting the claim that a hijacker’s body was found, only in February 2003 are the remains of two hijackers identified (see Late February 2003). While all of these bodies and plane parts are supposedly found, it will be claimed that none of the four black boxes for the two aircraft that hit the WTC are ever found. A National Transportation Safety Board spokesperson later says: “It’s extremely rare that we don’t get the recorders back. I can’t recall another domestic case in which we did not recover the recorders.” [CBS News, 2/23/2002] The black boxes are considered “nearly indestructible,” are placed in the safest parts of the aircraft, and are designed to survive impacts much greater than the WTC impact. They can withstand heat of up to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour, and can withstand an impact of an incredible 3,400 G’s. [ABC News, 9/17/2001] However, in 2004, it will be reported that some of the black boxes are found in the weeks after 9/11, but their discovery is kept secret (see October 2001).
Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Mike Bellone, National Transportation Safety Board, John McCole
Category Tags: WTC Investigation, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Billie Vincent, a former FAA security director, suggests the hijackers had inside help at the airports. “These people had to have the means to take control of the aircrafts. And that means they had to have weapons in order for those pilots to relinquish control. Think about it, they planned this thing out to the last detail for months. They are not going to take any risks at the front end. They knew they were going to be successful before they started… It’s the only thing that really makes sense to me.” [Miami Herald, 9/12/2001] The same day, the Boston Globe reports, “A former TWA official said he knew of at least two cases in which members of a cleaning crew smuggled weapons on board which were later used to hijack planes.… One source familiar with the airline industry said that, given enough time and money, it would not be difficult for terrorists to smuggle weapons onto a domestic flight. He said terrorists could arrange to have weapons moved onto an airliner by having terrorists or sympathizers hired as air cargo handlers or airline cleaners. The weapons could then be brought on board and concealed without ever having to pass through a security checkpoint. ‘If you have a year or more to plan, how hard can it be to get someone hired to clean the trash out of an airplane,’ the source said.” [Boston Globe, 9/12/2001]
Entity Tags: Billie Vincent
A manager at the FAA’s New York Center begins forwarding evidence relating to the 9/11 attacks to the FBI, but he does not pass on, or reveal the existence of, a tape recording of some of the center’s air traffic controllers recalling their interactions with the hijacked aircraft. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ] Shortly after the attacks occurred, Kevin Delaney, the New York Center’s quality assurance manager, was instructed to make a tape recording of six controllers at the center who had been involved in handling or tracking two of the hijacked aircraft, giving their personal accounts of what happened (see 11:40 a.m. September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 10/1/2003 ; Washington Post, 5/6/2004; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004] Tape Not Provided to FBI - In response to verbal requests from the FBI, the FAA’s liaison to the bureau provides it with evidential material relating to the 9/11 attacks. Beginning on September 12, Delaney forwards evidence materials, as they become available, to the FBI through this liaison. But, although the tape of the controllers’ statements was logged into the New York Center’s record of evidence, neither Delaney nor Mike McCormick, the center’s manager, passes it to the FBI. Furthermore, neither of the two managers even discloses the existence of the tape to the FBI or the FAA liaison. Nor do they provide the center’s evidence log, which references the tape, to the FBI. Yet McCormick will later claim that one of his reasons for having requested the tape be made on September 11 was that he wanted a recording of the controllers’ statements that would be immediately available for law enforcement efforts. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004] He had also reassured the six controllers that the tape with their recorded statements on would be strictly for use only by law enforcement personnel (see (Shortly Before 11:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 10/1/2003 ] Tape Could Have Been Provided on Following Day - By September 13, the FAA liaison will have provided the FBI with air traffic control voice and radar data, which the bureau is most interested in receiving, as well as several written statements that have already been obtained from controllers at the FAA’s Boston and Cleveland Centers, and from personnel at Washington’s Dulles Airport. Had McCormick or Delaney notified the liaison of the tape’s existence, he could have forwarded it to the FBI along with these statements. The tape will be deliberately destroyed several months later (see Between December 2001 and February 2002), and is never made available to the FBI for its investigation. [US Department of Transportation, 5/4/2004 ; Air Safety Week, 5/17/2004]
Entity Tags: Mike McCormick, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Kevin Delaney
Around 2:30 a.m., the FBI arrives at Huffman Aviation flight school in Venice, Florida, inquiring about suspected hijackers Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi, who attended the school (see July 6-December 19, 2000). Huffman Aviation has around 200 students, about half of them foreigners. The FBI takes away all its records on former students, including photocopies of Atta and Alshehhi’s passports, as well as two computers. [Charlotte Sun, 9/12/2001; New York Times, 9/13/2001; US Congress, 3/19/2002] Students at another Florida flight school say the FBI arrived at their school within hours of the attacks (see September 11, 2001).
Entity Tags: Huffman Aviation, Mohamed Atta, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Marwan Alshehhi
Despite having been told by the FBI not to do so, Deena Burnett decides to speak to several groups of reporters about the four calls her husband Tom Burnett made to her from Flight 93, before it crashed in Pennsylvania. The FBI visited Deena the previous evening and, she later recalls, “told me specifically not to say anything to anyone about my cell phone conversations with Tom, especially the media, because it was part of their investigation.” [Burnett and Giombetti, 2006, pp. 81] But by this morning, she will comment, “everything I would have told the media had been reported on the news by the FBI, police, and Father Frank” Colacicco, from the church where her family worships. “If they could tell their stories, I knew now I could tell mine. There would be no harm to ‘the evidence’ in answering [reporters’] questions.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 9/12/2001; Burnett and Giombetti, 2006, pp. 93-94] Throughout the day, she has six “media waves” separately come into her home to interview her. The reporters are interested in the cell phone calls she received from her husband. She recalls: “I had to be very cautious about everything I said. I didn’t want to say anything that would interfere with the FBI investigation. I verified the calls had taken place, but gave no specific information about what Tom and I had discussed.” The FBI visits Deena around 3:00 p.m. to ask some follow-up questions to their interviews with her the previous day (see (12:30 p.m.) September 11, 2001). In her 2006 book, Deena Burnett makes no mention of them complaining about her having talked to the media. [Burnett and Giombetti, 2006, pp. 97-104]
At the time of 9/11, the FBI’s Saudi Arabia office was comprised of only legal attache Wilfred Rattigan and his assistant Gamal Abdel-Hafiz. Abdel-Hafiz, the FBI’s only Muslim agent at the time, had been appointed to the position in February 2001 despite a controversy with his FBI work back in the US (see Early 1999-March 21, 2000). Some fellow FBI agents accused him of refusing to secretly record conversations with Muslim suspects. Time will report, “The FBI sent reinforcements [to the Saudi Arabian office] within two weeks of 9/11, but it appears that the bureau’s team never got on top of the thousands of leads flowing in from the US and Saudi governments.… According to several former employees of the US embassy in Riyadh, the FBI legal attache’s office housed within the embassy was often in disarray during the months that followed 9/11. When an FBI supervisor arrived [nearly a year after 9/11] to clean up the mess, she found a mountain of paper and, for security reasons, ordered wholesale shredding that resulted in the destruction of unprocessed documents relating to the 9/11 investigations.” In June 2005, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin investigating allegations that the FBI’s Saudi office was “delinquent in pursuing thousands of leads” related to 9/11. Piles of time-sensitive leads still had not been followed up when the supervisor arrives. The FBI will claim that the thousands of shredded documents were duplicated elsewhere. But the Judiciary Committee will assert some material is lost. One employee will claim that some of the lost information “was leads, suspicious-activity material, information on airline pilots.” Rattigan, who has converted to Islam, later will sue the FBI for discrimination and will claim that the FBI refused to provide him with adequate resources to cope with the workload after 9/11. [Frontline, 10/16/2003; Time, 6/27/2005]
Entity Tags: Gamal Abdel-Hafiz, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Wilfred Rattigan
Category Tags: Robert Wright and Vulgar Betrayal, Terrorism Financing, FBI 9/11 Investigation
On September 12, the FBI in Miami issues a national bulletin for law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for two cars connected with the 9/11 attacks. One is a red 1989 Pontiac registered to Mohamed Atta, presumably the car he bought in July 2000 (see Early July 2000). The other is an Oldsmobile Alero, leased from a company in Boca Raton, but this is located later in the day. [Washington Post, 9/12/2001; WESH 2 (Orlando/Daytona), 9/12/2001; CNN, 9/13/2001] About six weeks later, the Pontiac and another unspecified car that belonged to Atta and Marwan Alshehhi are found at a used car dealership in Tamarac, Florida, near Fort Lauderdale. The hijackers reportedly sold them a week before 9/11. [CNN, 10/26/2001; CNN, 10/28/2001; Miami Herald, 10/29/2001] Also around this time, Brad Warrick, the owner of a Florida company that rented cars to Atta (see August 6-September 9, 2001), reports finding about a teaspoon of an unidentified white powder in the trunk of a Ford Escort used by Atta in the days before the attacks. The FBI had impounded the car for two weeks after 9/11, and it has not been used since. An FBI spokeswoman says it is unlikely that agents would have missed a suspicious powder and suggests it could be fingerprinting dust. [Miami Herald, 10/29/2001; Reuters, 10/29/2001; Washington Post, 10/30/2001]
Entity Tags: Brad Warrick, Mohamed Atta, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: Mohamed Atta, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Under the authority of the FBI, remains of 9/11 victims at the Pentagon are taken to a temporary morgue in the Pentagon’s north parking lot, where they are photographed, labeled, and then placed in refrigeration. [Stars and Stripes, 9/17/2001; US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. A-47; Quartermaster Professional Bulletin, 3/2005] They are then transported to Davison Army Airfield at nearby Fort Belvoir, and from there to Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, where there is a large mortuary created for use in wartime. FBI agents accompany the remains at all points during transportation. [American Forces Press Service, 9/15/2001; PBS, 9/21/2001; Soldiers, 10/2001; US Department of Health and Human Services, 7/2002, pp. C-55] About 250 people, including 50 medical examiners and 50 members of the FBI’s ‘disaster team,’ work at the mortuary to identify the remains. [Stars and Stripes, 9/17/2001] Remains are first scanned for the presence of unexploded ordnance or metallic foreign bodies. FBI experts then collect trace evidence to find any chemicals from explosives, and also conduct fingerprint identifications. [Pentagram, 11/30/2001] Other techniques used include dental records and X-rays. Tissue samples are sent to an Armed Forces laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, for DNA analysis. [PBS, 9/21/2001] Identification is problematic because specimens are often unrecognizable body parts, and are nearly always mixed with debris composed of aircraft and building materials. [Harcke, Bifano, and Koeller, 4/2002] However, by the time Dover staff formally end their identification effort, on November 16, they have identified remains of 184 of the 189 people who died in the Pentagon or aboard Flight 77, including the five hijackers (see November 21, 2001). [Washington Post, 11/21/2001]
Entity Tags: Pentagon, Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory, Fort Belvoir, Dover Air Force Base, Federal Bureau of Investigation
The first FBI agents arrive at the Flight 93 crash scene soon after it goes down. [Kashurba, 2002, pp. 60] Due to the criminal nature of the crash, the FBI becomes lead authority for the investigation of the site. Attempts are made to have the area declared a federal disaster, but these are unsuccessful. [DMORT National News, 1/2002] For about two weeks, the FBI’s evidence recovery team of about 150 agents goes over the site with sifters, filtering evidence from the soil. It recovers about 510 pounds of human remains. [Longman, 2002, pp. 259; Age (Melbourne), 9/9/2002] Despite the lack of wreckage reported by those first at the crash scene (see (After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001), the FBI claims that it recovers 95 percent of the plane. The largest piece found, it says, is a seven-foot-long piece of the fuselage skin, including four windows. With the exception of the two black boxes, all wreckage is passed on to United Airlines. Asked what United will do with this, a spokeswoman says, “I don’t think a decision has been made… but we’re not commenting.” [CNN, 9/24/2001; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/25/2001] While conducting its investigation of the crash site, the FBI overrules a plan to carefully map the area and mark the positions of debris so as to determine exactly how Flight 93 crashed, claiming this would be too time-consuming (see September 16, 2001). [Longman, 2002, pp. 262] After it completes its work, the site becomes the responsibility of the county coroner, who continues the search for remains. [Longman, 2002, pp. 258-259]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, United Airlines
Barry Mawn. [Source: Associated Press]On September 13, New York authorities take into custody ten people of Middle Eastern descent at JFK International and La Guardia Airports, reportedly fearing they intend to hijack aircraft and commit another suicidal terrorist attack on a US target. This leads to all three major New York-area airports—JFK, La Guardia, and Newark—being abruptly shut down, just hours after they reopened for the first time since the 9/11 attacks took place. [Associated Press, 9/14/2001; Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001; New York Times, 9/14/2001; Washington Post, 9/14/2001] Armed and Carrying False ID - According to the Washington Post, the detained individuals are carrying knives and false identification. [Washington Post, 9/14/2001] Four of them are reportedly arrested as they try to board a flight from JFK Airport to Los Angeles, and a woman is held on suspicion of assisting these four. Some of the four are reported as having pilots’ certificates from Flight Safety International in Vero Beach, Florida, where some of the alleged 9/11 hijackers are currently believed to have taken flying lessons. Later on, the other five men are arrested at La Guardia Airport “under similar circumstances.” [Dallas Morning News, 9/14/2001] According to the New York Times, “Law enforcement officials said one of those held was carrying a false pilot’s identification.” Furthermore, several of the detained men “showed up at the airport with tickets for flights canceled on Tuesday [September 11] and tried to use them.” Investigators say they believe one of the men had been among a group of passengers that behaved suspiciously and became aggressive after their aircraft—United Airlines Flight 23—had its takeoff canceled on the morning of 9/11 (see (After 9:19 a.m.) September 11, 2001). New York Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik says one of the men arrested at JFK Airport “attempted to clear security and he was stopped.” [New York Times, 9/14/2001] Men Released, No Connections Found to 9/11 Attacks - However, the following morning the FBI announces that none of the detainees had any connection to the 9/11 attacks, and all but one of them have been released. Barry Mawn, the head of the New York FBI office, says: “The reporting that has been going on all night, I can definitively tell you, is inaccurate.… [W]e did talk to approximately a dozen individuals. We have only one individual left who is still being questioned by the task force. All other ten have been released.” [CNN, 9/14/2001; PBS, 9/14/2001] Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker says that no knives, box cutters, guns, or other weapons were found on the individuals. [Washington Post, 9/15/2001] After talking to the directors of the FBI and CIA, Senator Joseph Biden (D) tells CNN that the detained men had “no connection whatsoever to what happened at the World Trade towers or the Pentagon, or this organizational network.” He explains: “One guy, an actual pilot, got on the plane, coincidentally had his brother’s identification as well. His brother happened to live in the apartment complex that was one in Boston where some of [the alleged hijackers] had actually been.” Biden adds: “Ten other people were going to a Boeing conference. They had stickers on their bags.… The folks at the airport thought, hey, wait a minute, are they impersonating crew? And they weren’t.” Biden says the one man who has not yet been released “was a screwball who was acting out, you know, acting out and saying and demanding.… Making problems, and they arrested him.” By 11:20 a.m. on September 14, the three New York-area airports are reopened. [Associated Press, 9/14/2001; CNN, 9/14/2001]
Entity Tags: Barry Mawn, Bernard Kerik, La Guardia Airport, Mindy Tucker, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Joseph Biden, John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark International Airport
The White House announces that there is “overwhelming evidence” that Bin Laden is behind the attacks. [MSNBC, 9/13/2001]
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Bush administration
Human remains from the Flight 93 crash site are moved to a temporary morgue that has been set up at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory, several miles away in Friedens. High-tech mortuary equipment has been brought to the armory in a tractor-trailer. [Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, 9/12/2001 ; WTAE-TV, 9/13/2001] 75 to 100 specialists, including pathologists and fingerprint experts, are involved in the attempt to identify the remains. Forensic anthropologist Dennis Dirkmaat says that because the remains have suffered “extreme fragmentation,” most will need to be identified using DNA analysis. [Washington Post, 9/14/2001] When remains cannot be identified at the temporary morgue, samples are sent on to the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, where samples from the Pentagon crash are also being analyzed (see September 11-November 16, 2001). [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 9/25/2001; Stars and Stripes, 10/8/2001; KCRA, 12/20/2001] By December 19, the remains of all 40 passengers and crew from Flight 93 have been identified, using fingerprints, dental records, and DNA. Investigators have, by a process of elimination, also been able to isolate genetic profiles of the four hijackers. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12/30/2001; DMORT National News, 1/2002; Associated Press, 2/26/2002; Stripe, 9/20/2002] Searchers recovered about 510 pounds of human remains at the crash scene, equaling about eight percent of the total bodyweight on the plane. According to Somerset County Coroner Wallace Miller, everything else was vaporized. [Washington Post, 5/12/2002; Age (Melbourne), 9/9/2002; Canadian Press, 3/28/2004]
Entity Tags: Wallace Miller, Dennis Dirkmaat, Pennsylvania National Guard Armory, Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory
None of the manifests for the hijacked flights have ever been released, except for this partially obscured page which appears in Terry McDermott’s 2005 book, Perfect Soldiers. McDermott has not explained how or where he got this document. Names of the five hijackers are highlighted. [Source: Terry McDermott]On September 13, the FBI says there were 18 hijackers, and releases their names. Hani Hanjour’s name is not on the list. [CNN, 9/13/2001] On the morning of the next day, CNN announces on the air that “CNN managed to grab a list of the names of the 18 suspected hijackers that is supposed to be officially released by justice sometime later today.” An announcer reads the list, which actually contains 19 names. It is the same list as the day before, except for one new name: Mosear Caned. (Note that the name is a very rough phonetic spelling from a CNN transcript.) [CNN, 9/14/2001] Later in the day, the list is revised. Caned is gone and is replaced by Hani Hanjour. It is never explained who Caned is, how he got on the list, or even how his name is correctly spelled. No name even remotely similar to his appears on any of the released manifests of the hijacked 9/11 flights. [CNN, 9/14/2001; Associated Press, 9/14/2001] A few days later, it is reported that Hanjour’s “name was not on the American Airlines manifest for [Flight 77] because he may not have had a ticket.” [Washington Post, 9/16/2001]
Entity Tags: American Airlines, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Category Tags: Hani Hanjour, Key Hijacker Events, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Mohamed el-Atriss produced fake ID cards for the 9/11 hijackers. [Source: Associated Press]Mohamed el-Atriss, who supplied some of the hijackers with fake IDs (see (July-August 2001)), is visited by FBI agents and begins to help them with their inquiries. [Washington Post, 2/5/2003; Newark Star-Ledger, 10/20/2003] El-Atriss turns over his files to the FBI and, according to his lawyer, promises to “keep his eyes and ears open” for other Islamic militants. He tells the FBI he did not know the hijackers’ intentions when he sold them the ID cards. [Bergen Record, 9/11/2006] He is interviewed extensively by federal authorities over the next few months and successfully passes a lie detector test confirming he did not know they intended to hijack a plane. [Newark Star-Ledger, 10/20/2003] However, authorities plant an electronic surveillance device inside a printer he orders, to monitor who he is making documents for. [Bergen Record, 9/11/2006] El-Atriss’ usefulness suffers a setback when a local sheriff raids his business and arrests him in 2002 (see July 31, 2002), apparently without the FBI’s approval (see July 31, 2002 and After).
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, Mohamed el-Atriss
Category Tags: Counterterrorism Action After 9/11, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Majed Moqed’s identification card found in the rubble. [Source: FBI]Two or three documents belonging to the Flight 77 hijackers are found in the rubble at the Pentagon. One is a “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Student Identity Card” with Majed Moqed’s name on it. Forensic examination will later indicate that the card may have been fraudulent. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 44 ] Another is Nawaf Alhazmi’s USA ID card. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 27, 42 ; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] The 9/11 Commission will say that Salem Alhazmi’s USA ID is also found, although this will not be mentioned at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, where an otherwise exhaustive list of the hijackers’ ID found at the crash sites is submitted. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 27, 42 ; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] In addition, the Commission will say that Salem Alhazmi was unable to produce a photo ID when checking in for his flight on 9/11 (see (7:25 a.m.-7:36 a.m.) September 11, 2001), so it is unclear how the document could have come to be at the Pentagon. Based on report from the Secret Service, the 9/11 Commission will say these two documents appear genuine. However, they may actually be fakes (see (July-August 2001)). [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 27 ] There are at least a couple of other reported instances of other similar paper-based objects surviving the same plane crash, as well as that of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania (see After 10:06 a.m. September 11, 2001). [Athens Banner-Herald, 9/10/2004]
Entity Tags: Nawaf Alhazmi, Salem Alhazmi, Pentagon, Majed Moqed
A business card of Assem Jarrah, Ziad’s uncle. [Source: FBI]Several effects apparently belonging to Flight 93 hijackers are recovered from the crash site in Somerset County. They are: A Saudi Arabian ID card of Ahmed Alnami; [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] A Saudi Arabian Youth Hostel Association card of Ahmed Alnami; [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] Two passport sized photographs of Ahmed Alnami; [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] A charred section of Ziad Jarrah’s passport; [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] Saeed Alghamdi’s Saudi Arabian passport; [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] A business card of Assem Jarrah, Ziad’s uncle. It has Ramzi bin al-Shibh’s Hamburg address written on the back; [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 3/7/2006; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] Part of Ahmed Alnami’s Florida driving license; [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] A red bandana (a passenger on Flight 93 described the hijackers as using red bandanas, though this could have been someone else’s bandana (see (9:37 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006]
Entity Tags: Ahmed Alnami, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ziad Jarrah, Assem Jarrah, Saeed Alghamdi, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Flight 77’s damaged cockpit voice recorder. [Source: FBI]At around 3:40 a.m., investigators at the Pentagon recover the two “black boxes” from Flight 77. [Washington Times, 9/14/2001] These boxes are the plane’s flight data recorder and its cockpit voice recorder. [BBC, 9/15/2001] Some news reports claim they are found by two Fairfax County firefighters, Carlton Burkhammer and Brian Moravitz, as they comb through debris near the impact site. [Washington Post, 9/19/2001; Newsweek, 9/28/2001] But according to Arlington County spokesman Dick Bridges, members of the FBI’s evidence response team find them. [PBS, 9/14/2001; Washington Post, 9/14/2001] Authors Patrick Creed and Rick Newman will later clarify that Burkhammer and Moravitz find an object initially believed to be one of the black boxes, but closer inspection reveals it to be just “a charred chunk of machinery.” Subsequently, FBI photographer Jennifer Hill finds the cockpit voice recorder in a stack of rubble while assisting searchers. Thirty minutes later, a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) expert locates the flight data recorder in the same area. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 396-397 and 400-402] But Allyn Kilsheimer, a structural engineer who helps coordinate the emergency response at the Pentagon, later claims he had “found the black box,” which, he says, he had “stepped on… by accident.” [GW Magazine, 3/2002; Popular Mechanics, 3/2005] Washington FBI agent Christopher Combs says, “Somebody almost threw [the black boxes] away because they didn’t know what they looked like.” [Disaster News Network, 10/30/2002] Conflicting Accounts of Where Boxes Are Found - According to Dick Bridges, the two recorders are discovered “right where the plane came into the building.” [Associated Press, 9/14/2001] But the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Pentagon Building Performance Report, released in 2003, will claim that the flight data recorder was found “nearly 300 ft into the structure.” [Mlakar et al., 1/2003, pp. 40 ] In Creed and Newman’s account, the recorders are found in the Pentagon’s middle C Ring, near the “punch-out” hole made by the impacting aircraft. [Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 400-402] Boxes Taken Away for Analysis - The boxes are taken to the NTSB’s laboratory in Washington, where data is extracted from the flight data recorder, but they are reclaimed by the FBI later on in the morning. [Washington Times, 9/14/2001; Creed and Newman, 2008, pp. 402] A flight data recorder tracks an airplane’s flight movements for the last 25 hours, while the cockpit voice recorder contains radio transmissions and sounds from the cockpit for the last 30 minutes of its flight. Both are mounted in the tail of an aircraft and are encased in very strong materials like titanium. According to American Airlines and United Airlines, the black boxes aboard Flight 77 and the other hijacked planes were modern solid-state versions, which are more resistant to damage than older magnetic tape recorders. [Associated Press, 9/15/2001; BBC, 9/15/2001] FBI Director Robert Mueller later says that Flight 77’s data recorder has provided altitude, speed, and other information about the flight, but the voice recorder contained “nothing useful.” [CBS News, 2/23/2002] The 9/11 Commission will describe the cockpit voice recorder as being “badly burned and not recoverable.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 456] According to CBS News, preliminary information shows that the cockpit voice tape “appears to be blank or erased.” [CBS News, 9/16/2001] The two black boxes from Flight 93 are also recovered around this time (see September 13-14, 2001).
Entity Tags: Brian Moravitz, Carlton Burkhammer, Allyn Kilsheimer, Chris Combs, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jennifer Hill, National Transportation Safety Board, Dick Bridges
Officials deny that Flight 93 was shot down, but propose the theory that the hijackers had a bomb on board and blew up the plane. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 9/14/2001] Later in the month, it is reported that the “FBI has determined from the on site investigation that no explosive was involved.” [Associated Press, 9/25/2001]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, North American Aerospace Defense Command, National Transportation Safety Board, Richard B. Myers
A series of articles suggests that at least six of the 9/11 hijackers trained at US military bases. [New York Times, 9/15/2001; Newsweek, 9/15/2001; Washington Post, 9/16/2001] Three of the alleged hijackers—Ahmed Alnami, Ahmed Alghamdi, and Saeed Alghamdi—are revealed as having listed the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, as their permanent address on their driver’s licenses and car registrations, between 1996 and 1998. According to military records, the three used 10 Radford Boulevard as their address. This is a base roadway where residences for foreign-military flight trainees are located. Hamza Alghamdi was also connected to the Pensacola base (see 1996-August 2000). [Newsweek, 9/15/2001; Washington Post, 9/16/2001; Pensacola News Journal, 9/17/2001] Air Force spokesman Colonel Ken McClellan states that Saeed Alghamdi also attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. The Washington Post and Time magazine say he graduated from the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. (It is unclear whether Alghamdi therefore attended both Defense Language Institutes, or if this is simply a reporting error.) [Washington Post, 9/16/2001; Gannett News Service, 9/17/2001; Time, 9/24/2001] According to a high-ranking Pentagon official, another alleged hijacker was a former Saudi Air Force pilot who may have received training in strategy and tactics at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. [Los Angeles Times, 9/15/2001; Newsweek, 9/15/2001] A further hijacker—also said to be a former Saudi Air Force pilot—may have been given language instruction at Lackland Air Force Base. [Los Angeles Times, 9/15/2001; Newsweek, 9/15/2001] A man called Abdulaziz Alomari (the same name as one of the suspected Flight 11 hijackers) attended Brooks Air Force Base Aerospace Medical School in San Antonio, Texas. [Washington Post, 9/16/2001; Gannett News Service, 9/17/2001] Ken McClellan says a man with the name Mohamed Atta once attended the US International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama (see 1998). [Washington Post, 9/16/2001; Gannett News Service, 9/17/2001] According to Newsweek, it is not unusual for foreign nationals to train at US military facilities. A former Navy pilot tells the magazine that during his years at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, “we always, always, always trained other countries’ pilots. When I was there two decades ago, it was Iranians. The shah was in power. Whoever the country du jour is, that’s whose pilots we train.” Newsweek adds that the “US has a long-standing agreement with Saudi Arabia… to train pilots for its National Guard.” [Newsweek, 9/15/2001] The media stops looking into the hijackers’ possible US military connections after the Air Force makes a less than definitive statement, saying, “Some of the FBI suspects had names similar to those used by foreign alumni of US military courses. However discrepancies in their biographical data, such as birth dates 20 years off, indicate we are probably not talking about the same people.” [Washington Post, 9/16/2001]
Entity Tags: Mohamed Atta, Hamza Alghamdi, Ken McClellan, Ahmed Alnami, Abdulaziz Alomari, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Alghamdi, US Department of the Air Force
A report suggests the crash site of Flight 93 is being searched and recorded in 60 square-foot grids. [News Journal (Wilmington, DE), 9/16/2001] This approach is preferred by Wallace Miller, the local coroner, and Dennis Dirkmaat, a forensic anthropologist involved in searching the crash site. According to journalist and author Jere Longman, “The distribution patterns developed from such precise marking of airplane parts, remains and personal effects might have told them such things as exactly how the airplane struck the ground. Theoretically, by associating the location of particular remains with the location of parts of the airplane, they may have also gained some clues about which passengers had rushed the cockpit.” However, almost a year later Longman reports that this approach was not followed: “The FBI overruled them, instead dividing the site into five large sectors. It would be too time-consuming to mark tight grids, and would serve no real investigative purpose, the bureau decided. There was no mystery to solve about the crash. Everybody knew what happened to the plane.” [Longman, 2002, pp. 262] While the FBI claims there is no mystery, some news articles suggest the plane was shot down. (For example, [Philadelphia Daily News, 11/15/2001; Independent, 8/13/2002] ) In addition, at the time of this decision, investigators are still considering the possibility that a bomb might have destroyed the plane (see September 14, 2001). Unlike every other major airplane crash in modern history, no National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation is being conducted into the crash of Flight 93 (see After September 11, 2001). [Lappe and Marshall, 2004, pp. 40-41]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Wallace Miller, Dennis Dirkmaat
Category Tags: Other 9/11 Investigations, FBI 9/11 Investigation
An oil worker named Salem Alhazmi claimed the media was using a picture of him and saying it was that of the alleged hijacker of the same name. [Source: Saudi Gazette]Reports appear in many newspapers suggesting that some of the people the US initially says were 9/11 hijackers are actually still alive and that the actual hijackers may have used stolen identities: No media outlet has claimed that Hamza Alghamdi is still alive, but his family says the FBI photo “has no resemblance to him at all.” [Arab News, 9/22/2001; Washington Post, 9/25/2001] CNN shows a picture of a Saudi pilot called Saeed Alghamdi and claims it is the hijacker of the same name. However, the pilot is alive and working in Tunisia. The FBI listed the hijacker’s possible residence as Delray Beach, Florida, where the pilot trained in 1998, 1999, and 2000, which may be why CNN uses a photograph of the wrong person. The pilot returns to Saudi Arabia to avoid problems and CNN apologises for the error. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/14/2001; Arab News, 9/18/2001; Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2001; Daily Telegraph, 9/23/2001; BBC, 9/23/2001] A man named Salem Alhazmi claims he is the alleged hijacker of the same name, but he works in a petrochemical plant and had his passport stolen three years ago in Cairo. He says a picture being used in the media is of him. However, he is a different age to the hijacker, 26 not 21, has a different middle name, Ibrahim not Mohamed, and the photos appear to be of different people. In addition, the FBI does not release official pictures of the hijackers until a week after he makes this claim. The father of the other Salem Alhazmi says his son is missing, as is Salem’s brother and fellow hijacker Nawaf Alhazmi. [Washington Post, 9/20/2001; Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2001; Guardian, 9/21/2001; Daily Telegraph, 9/23/2001; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/27/2001; Saudi Gazette, 9/29/2002; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 191 ; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] A man named Ahmed Alnami is alive and working as an administrative supervisor with Saudi Arabian Airlines in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. [Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2001] He has never lost his passport and finds it “very worrying” that his identity appears to have been stolen. [Daily Telegraph, 9/23/2001] However, there is another Ahmed Alnami who is 10 years younger, and appears to be dead, according to his father. [ABC News, 3/15/2002] Ahmed Alnami’s family says his FBI picture is correct. [Washington Post, 9/25/2001] A man called Abdulrahman Alomari is alive and works as a pilot for Saudi Arabian Airlines. [New York Times, 9/16/2001; Independent, 9/17/2001; BBC, 9/23/2001] He was a neighbour of Adnan Bukhari and Amer Kamfar, who were both wrongly suspected of involvement in the 9/11 attacks at the start of the investigation. He moved out of his home in Vero Beach, Florida, shortly before the attacks. [CNN, 9/14/2001] A man called Abdulaziz Alomari is an engineer with Saudi Telecoms. [BBC, 9/23/2001] He claims that his passport was stolen in 1995 while he was living in Denver, Colorado. [Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2001] He says: “They gave my name and my date of birth, but I am not a suicide bomber. I am here. I am alive.” [London Times, 9/20/2001; Daily Telegraph, 9/23/2001] The FBI initially gave two possible birthdates for Abdulaziz Alomari. One is apparently that of the engineer, the other of the alleged hijacker. [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/14/2001; New Yorker, 5/27/2002; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006] The Saudi government has claimed that Mohand Alshehri is alive and that he was not in the US on 9/11, but no more details are known. [Associated Press, 9/29/2001] The brothers Waleed M. Alshehri and Wail Alshehri are alive. Their father is a diplomat who has been stationed in the US and Bombay, India. A Saudi spokesman says: “This is a respectable family. I know his sons, and they’re both alive.” [Arab News, 9/19/2001; Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2001] There is a second pair of Saudi brothers named Wail and Waleed M. who may have been the real hijackers. Their father says they have been missing since December 2000. [Arab News, 9/17/2001; ABC News, 3/15/2002] The still-living Waleed M. Alshehri is a pilot with Saudi Airlines, studying in Morocco. [Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2001; Associated Press, 9/22/2001] He acknowledges that he attended flight training school at Dayton Beach in the United States. [BBC, 9/23/2001; Daily Trust (Abuja), 9/24/2001] He was interviewed by US officials in Morocco, and cleared of all charges against him (though apparently the FBI is still using his picture). [Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, 9/21/2001] The still living Waleed Alshehri is also apparently a pilot. [Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2001] He claims he saw his picture on CNN and recognized it from when he studied flying in Florida. But he also says he has no brother named Wail. [As-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), 9/22/2001] Mohamed Atta’s father says he spoke to his son on the phone on September 12, 2001. [New York Times, 9/19/2001; Chicago Tribune, 9/20/2001] On September 19, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation distributes a “special alert” to its member banks asking for information about the attackers. The list includes “Al-Midhar, Khalid. Alive.” The Justice Department later calls this a “typo.” [Associated Press, 9/20/2001; Cox News Service, 10/21/2001] The BBC says, “There are suggestions that another suspect, Khalid Almihdhar, may also be alive.” [BBC, 9/23/2001] The Guardian says Almihdhar is believed to be alive, but investigators are looking into three possibilities. Either his name was stolen for a hijacker alias, or he allowed his name to be used so that US officials would think he died, or he died in the crash. [Guardian, 9/21/2001] Majed Moqed was last seen by a friend in Saudi Arabia in 2000. This friend claims the FBI picture does not look like Moqed. [Arab News, 9/22/2001] The Saudi government insists that five of the Saudis mentioned as 9/11 hijackers are still alive. [New York Times, 9/21/2001] On September 20, FBI Director Robert Mueller says: “We have several others that are still in question. The investigation is ongoing, and I am not certain as to several of the others.” [Newsday, 9/21/2001] On September 27, after all of the revelations mentioned above are reported in the media, Mueller will state, “We are fairly certain of a number of them.” [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9/28/2001] On September 20, the London Times reports, “Five of the hijackers were using stolen identities, and investigators are studying the possibility that the entire suicide squad consisted of impostors.” [London Times, 9/20/2001] The mainstream media briefly doubts some of the hijackers’ identities. For instance, a story in The Observer on September 23 puts the names of hijackers like Saeed Alghamdi in quotation marks. [Observer, 9/23/2001] However, the story will die down, and it will hardly be noticed when Mueller states on November 2, 2001: “As I have indicated before, one of the initial responsibilities of that investigation was to determine who the hijackers were. We at this point definitely know the 19 hijackers who were responsible for that catastrophe.” [Office of the Press Secretary, 11/2/2001] A law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity, will confirm that the hijackers’ names released in late September, on the 28th, are the true identities of all 19 hijackers. The Associated Press story quoting him will add that “the names were those listed on the planes’ passenger manifests and investigators were certain that those were the names the hijackers used when they entered the United States.” But the Saudi Institute, an independent human rights watchdog group that researches the hijackers’ identities, will maintain that Abdulaziz Alomari used someone else’s passport. [Associated Press, 11/3/2001; Associated Press, 11/3/2002] In 2003, FBI spokesman Bill Carter will say: “There has been no change in thought about the identities of those who boarded those planes. It’s like saying my name is John Smith. There are a lot of people with the name of John Smith, but they’re not the same person.” When asked about Mueller’s comments, Carter will add, “He might have told Congress [about the identity theft], but we have done a thorough investigation and we are confident.” Carter will also comment that the bureau identified the hijackers “[t]hrough extensive investigation,” and, “We checked the flight manifests, their whereabouts in this country, and we interviewed witnesses who identified the hijackers.” [Insight, 6/24/2003] The 9/11 Commission will later endorse the hijackers’ names published by the FBI around this time. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004]
Entity Tags: Ahmed Alnami, Hamza Alghamdi, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 9/11 Commission, Majed Moqed, Abdulaziz Alomari, Marwan Alshehhi, Khalid Almihdhar, Mohand Alshehri, Mohamed Atta, William Carter, Waleed M. Alshehri, Wail Alshehri, Robert S. Mueller III, Saeed Alghamdi, Salem Alhazmi
Category Tags: Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Mohamed Atta, Other 9/11 Hijackers, FBI 9/11 Investigation
A confidential FBI bulletin states a “badly damaged” commercially manufactured cigarette lighter with a concealed knife blade has been recovered at the Flight 93 crash scene. The knife was about two and three-fourths inches long, with a knife blade of about two and a half inches. [Los Angeles Times, 9/18/2001] A 9/11 Commission staff report in 2004 will also mention this knife. [9/11 Commission, 8/26/2004, pp. 104 ]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation
It is reported that a federal grand jury has been convened in White Plains, New York, to investigate the 9/11 attacks. The grand jury, said to have begun meeting a few days earlier, will be able to issue subpoenas. New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik says it won’t be the only 9/11-related grand jury: “You’re going to see things like the grand jury in White Plains. You’re going to see grand juries around the country, perhaps, looking into matters pertaining to this investigation.” White Plains is part of the federal court system’s Southern District of New York, which has historically led all investigations related to bin Laden. [Associated Press, 9/18/2001] On October 22, 2001, the Wall Street Journal will report, “The federal grand jury investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is casting a wide net, seeking information from witnesses about their contacts with the 19 hijackers as well as other suspected terrorists,” and it will detail some of the witnesses appearing before the grand jury. [Wall Street Journal, 10/22/2001] However, thorough searches of the Lexis-Nexus database show no further mention of this grand jury, or any other 9/11-related grand juries. In early October 2001, the Justice Department will take over all 9/11 related prosecutions (see October 11, 2001).
Entity Tags: Bernard Kerik, White Plains federal grand jury, Osama bin Laden
A teenaged Mohamed Atta with his father, Mohamed al-Amir Awad al-Sayed Atta. [Source: Family photo]Mohamed Atta’s father holds a press conference in Cairo and makes a number of surprising claims. He believes that the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, did the 9/11 attacks, and stole his son’s identity. Mohamed el-Amir claims that his son Atta was a mama’s boy prone to airsickness, a dedicated architecture student who rarely mentioned politics, and a victim of an intricate framing. He says that Atta spoke to him on the phone on September 12 about “normal things,” one day after he was supposed to be dead; but a previous article reports that “he had not heard from his son since the attack, but was confident he had nothing to do with the carnage.” Atta called his family about once a month, yet never told them he was in the US, continuing to say he was studying in Germany. Atta’s family never saw him after 1999, and Atta canceled a trip to visit them in late 2000. His father even shows a picture of his son, claiming he looks similar but not the same as the terrorist Atta. [New York Times, 9/19/2001; Arab News, 9/19/2001; Chicago Tribune, 9/20/2001; Newsweek, 9/24/2001] Atta’s father claims that “he has recently received a very loving letter from his son, in which the young man wrote that he would come to Egypt to get married.” [BBC, 9/18/2001] Concerning the flying skills of this son, he asks, “Did he ever learn to fly? Never. He never even had a kite.” Moreover, “He was afraid of flying.” [New York Times, 9/19/2001; Newsweek, 9/24/2001] He also says that the man pictured in published photos from an airport surveillance camera had a heavier build than his son (see (Between 5:45 a.m. and 5:53 a.m.) September 11, 2001). [Cairo Times, 9/20/2001] A year later, he still believes his son is alive. He again reiterates this statement at the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. [Guardian, 9/2/2002; Associated Press, 9/11/2004] But, fours years later, he makes a statement (see July 19, 2005) which can be viewed as a tacit acceptance that his son was involved. [CNN, 7/20/2005]
Entity Tags: Mohamed Atta, Israel Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks (Mossad), Mohamed el-Amir
The FBI claims on this day that there were six hijacking teams on the morning of 9/11. [New York Times, 9/19/2001; Guardian, 10/13/2001] A different report claims investigators are privately saying eight. [Independent, 9/25/2001] However, the reports below suggest there may have been as many as nine aborted flights, leading to a potential total of 13 hijackings: Knives of the same type used in the successful hijackings were found taped to the backs of fold-down trays on a Continental Airlines flight from Newark. [Guardian, 9/19/2001] The FBI is investigating American Airlines Flight 43, which was scheduled to leave Boston about 8:10 a.m. bound for Los Angeles but was canceled minutes before takeoff due to a mechanical problem. [BBC, 9/18/2001; Chicago Tribune, 9/18/2001; Guardian, 9/19/2001] Another version claims the flight left from Newark and made it as far as Cincinnati before being grounded in the nationwide air ban. [New York Times, 9/19/2001] Knives and box cutters were found on two separate canceled Delta Airlines planes later that day, one leaving Atlanta for Brussels and the other leaving from Boston. [Time, 9/22/2001; Independent, 9/25/2001] On September 14, two knives were found on an Air Canada flight that would have flown to New York on 9/11 if not for the air ban. [CNN, 10/15/2001] Two men arrested on 9/11 may have lost their nerve on American Airlines Flight 1729 from Newark to San Antonio via Dallas that was scheduled to depart at 8:50 a.m., and was later forced to land in St. Louis. Alternately, they may have been planning an attack for September 15, 2001. Their names are Mohammed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan, whose real name according to later reports is Syed Gul Mohammad Shah. [New York Times, 9/19/2001] There may have been an attempt to hijack United Airlines Flight 23 flying from JFK Airport, New York to Los Angeles around 9:00 a.m. Shortly after 9:00 a.m., United Airlines flight dispatcher Ed Ballinger sent out a warning about the first WTC crash to the flights he was handling (see 9:19 a.m. September 11, 2001). Because of this warning, the crew of Flight 23 told the passengers it had a mechanical problem and immediately returned to the gate. Ballinger was later told by authorities that six men initially wouldn’t get off the plane. When the men finally disembarked, they disappeared into the crowd and never returned. Later, authorities checked their luggage and found copies of the Koran and al-Qaeda instruction sheets. [Associated Press, 9/14/2001; Chicago Daily Herald, 4/14/2004] In mid-2002, a NORAD deputy commander says “we don’t know for sure” if Flight 23 was to have been hijacked. [Globe and Mail, 6/13/2002] According to anonymous FAA officials, a plane bound for Chicago, home of the Sears Tower, could have been another target for hijacking. The plane landed unexpectedly at the Cleveland airport after the FAA initiated a national ground stop. Four Middle Eastern men had deplaned and left the airport before officials could detain them for questioning. [Freni, 2003, pp. 81] A box cutter knife was found under a seat cushion on American Airlines Flight 160, a 767 that would have flown from San Diego to New York on the morning of 9/11 but for the air ban. [Chicago Tribune, 9/23/2001] The FBI is said to be seeking a number of passengers who failed to board the same, rescheduled flights when the grounding order on commercial planes in the US was lifted. [BBC, 9/18/2001] The Independent points out suspicions have been fueled “that staff at US airports may have played an active role in the conspiracy and helped the hijackers to circumvent airport security.” They also note, “It is possible that at least some of the flights that have come under scrutiny were used as decoys, or as fallback targets.” [Independent, 9/25/2001]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mohammed Azmath, Syed Gul Mohammad Shah
A few weeks after the attacks, US investigators say the hijackers appeared to have spent about $500,000 while in the US. An official says, “This was not a low-budget operation. There is quite a bit of money coming in, and they are spending quite a bit of money.” [Washington Post, 9/29/2001; Guardian, 10/1/2001; Washington Post, 10/7/2001] In a detailed analysis published in the summer of 2002, the FBI will again report that the hijackers had access to a total of $500,000 to $600,000, of which $325,000 flowed through their SunTrust accounts. [New York Times, 7/10/2002; CNN, 7/10/2002 Sources: Dennis Lormel] The same figure is provided by John S. Pistole, FBI Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division, when he testifies before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. “[T]he 9/11 hijackers utilized slightly over $300,000 through formal banking channels to facilitate their time in the US. We assess they used another $200-300,000 in cash to pay for living expenses.” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 133 ] However, officials later back away from this figure and in August 2004 the 9/11 Commission says that the hijackers’ spending in the US was only “more than $270,000.” [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 143 ] In addition, the number of bank accounts the hijackers are said to have opened varies. Shortly after the attacks, investigators believe they had about a dozen accounts at US banks. In July 2002, Dennis Lormel, chief of the FBI unit investigating the money behind the attacks, tells the New York Times they had 35 accounts, including 14 with the SunTrust Bank. [Washington Post, 10/7/2001; New York Times, 7/10/2002 Sources: Dennis Lormel] However, a year after the attacks, FBI Director Robert Mueller tells the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, “In total, the hijackers opened 24 bank accounts at four different US banks.” [US Congress, 9/26/2002] Not only is Mueller’s assertion contradicted by Lormel’s previous statement, but it is also demonstrably false, as the hijackers had at least 25 US bank accounts with at least 6 different banks (SunTrust Bank, Hudson United Bank, Dime Savings Bank, First National Bank of Florida, Bank of America, and First Union National Bank) (see February 4, 2000, June 28-July 7, 2000, Early September 2000, May 1-July 18, 2001, and June 27-August 23, 2001). [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia; Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 19 ] The 9/11 Commission’s Report and its Terrorist Financing Monograph focus on some of the transfers made to the hijackers (see January 15, 2000-August 2001, June 13-September 25, 2000, June 29, 2000-September 18, 2000, and December 5, 2000), but ignore others (see June 2000-August 2001, May 2001, Early August-August 22, 2001, Summer 2001 and before, and Late August-Early September 2001). Neither the report nor the monograph gives the total number of bank accounts the hijackers opened. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004 ] In addition, the identities of the hijackers’ financiers reportedly change over time (see September 24, 2001-December 26, 2002).
Entity Tags: 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, Dennis Lormel, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, 9/11 Commission, John S. Pistole
Category Tags: Terrorism Financing, 9/11 Commission, 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Lofti Raissi. [Source: Amnesty International]Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian pilot living in Britain, is arrested and accused of helping to train four of the hijackers. An FBI source says, “We believe he is by far the biggest find we have had so far. He is of crucial importance to us.” [Las Vegas Review-Journal, 9/29/2001] However, in April 2002, a judge dismisses all charges against him, calling the charges “tenuous.” US officials originally said, “They had video of him with Hani Hanjour, who allegedly piloted the plane that crashed into the Pentagon; records of phone conversations between the two men; evidence that they had flown a training plane together; and evidence that Raissi had met several of the hijackers in Las Vegas. It turned out, the British court found, that the video showed Raissi with his cousin, not Mr. Hanjour, that Raissi had mistakenly filled in his air training logbook and had never flown with Hanjour, and that Raissi and the hijackers were not in Las Vegas at the same time. The US authorities never presented any phone records showing conversations between Raissi and Hanjour. It appears that in this case the US authorities handed over all the information they had…” [Christian Science Monitor, 3/27/2002; Guardian, 9/26/2005] Raissi later says he will sue the British and American governments unless he is given a “widely publicized apology” for his months in prison and the assumption of “guilty until proven innocent.” [Reuters, 8/14/2002] In September 2003, he does sue both governments for $20 million. He also wins a undisclosed sum from the British tabloid Mail on Sunday for printing false charges against him. [Guardian, 9/16/2003; BBC, 10/7/2003; Arizona Republic, 10/14/2003] Declassified documents will later reveal that the British arrested Raissi only days after the FBI requested that the British discretely monitor and investigate him, not arrest him. [Guardian, 9/26/2005] Raissi perfectly matches the description of an individual mentioned in FBI agent Ken Williams’ “Phoenix memo” (see July 10, 2001), whom the FBI had attempted to investigate in May 2001 (see 1997-July 2001).
Entity Tags: Lotfi Raissi, Hani Hanjour, United Kingdom, Pentagon, Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States
Category Tags: Hani Hanjour, Londonistan - UK Counterterrorism, Alleged Hijackers' Flight Training, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Fox News claims that up to 12 other Middle Eastern men dressed in pilot uniforms were on other flights scheduled to take off on the morning of 9/11. Hijackings on all these flights were foiled when an unexpected ban on new flights prevented them from taking off. An FBI source says they had been invited into the cockpits under the impression that they were guest pilots from other airlines. It is standard practice to give guest pilots the spare seat in the cockpit known as the jump seat. [Fox News, 9/24/2001] Flight 93’s cockpit voice recording has apparently shown that “one of the four hijackers had been invited into the cockpit area before the flight took off.” Many pilot uniforms had gone missing prior to 9/11. It is claimed that Mohamed Atta was given a guided tour of Boston’s Logan Airport the week before 9/11 when he turned up in a pilot uniform saying he was with Saudi Airlines. [Herald Sun (Melbourne), 9/25/2001]
FBI spokesman Rex Tomb says that it will take time for criminal proceedings to commence against the people thought to be responsible for 9/11: “There’s going to be a considerable amount of time before anyone associated with the attacks is actually charged.” He continues, “To be charged with a crime, this means we have found evidence to confirm our suspicions, and a prosecutor has said we will pursue this case in court.” In mid-August 2007 Zacarias Moussaoui will be the only person charged in connection with 9/11 in the US, being sentenced to life in prison in spring 2006 (see May 3, 2006), but it is unclear if he was involved in the 9/11 plot or a planned follow up plot (see January 30, 2003). Osama bin Laden will not be charged in connection with his alleged participation (see June 6, 2006 and August 28, 2006). [Wired News, 9/27/2001]
Entity Tags: Rex Tomb, Federal Bureau of Investigation
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]
Entity Tags: Globe Aviation Services Corp., Federal Bureau of Investigation, Burns Security, Washington Dulles International Airport, Nawaf Alhazmi, Mohamed Abdi, Logan Airport, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport
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.
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mohamed Atta
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, Mohamed Atta
It is reported that Boston’s Logan Airport has no cameras in its terminals, gate areas, or concourses. It is possibly the only major airport in the US not to have such cameras. The two other airports used by the hijackers to launch the 9/11 attacks had security cameras, but only some footage of the hijackers in the Washington airport is leaked to the press in 2004. [Boston Herald, 9/29/2001] It was previously reported that FBI agents had “examined footage from dozens of cameras at the three airports [including Logan] where the terrorists boarded the aircraft.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/13/2001]
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]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Seymour Hersh
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, Key Hijacker Events
Several media outlets report that, in addition to other transactions, the hijackers received $100,000 wired from Pakistan to two accounts of Mohamed Atta in Florida (see also Summer 2001 and before and Early August 2001). [ABC News, 9/30/2001; CNN, 10/1/2001; Fox News, 10/2/2001; Associated Press, 10/2/2001] For example, CNN says, “Suspected hijacker Mohamed Atta received wire transfers via Pakistan and then distributed the cash via money orders bought here in Florida. A senior law enforcement source tells CNN, the man sending the money to Atta is believed to be Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.” [CNN, 10/6/2001; CNN, 10/7/2001; CNN, 10/8/2001] The story will also be mentioned by Congressman John LaFalce at a hearing before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services. [US Congress, 10/3/2001] However, Pakistan, a nuclear power, has already become a key US ally in the war on terror (see September 13-15, 2001). ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed, who is found to have had several telephone conversations with Saeed (see Summer 2000), is replaced (see October 7, 2001), and the story soon disappears from view (see September 24, 2001-December 26, 2002).
Entity Tags: Saeed Sheikh, Mohamed Atta
Category Tags: Pakistan and the ISI, Saeed Sheikh, Mahmood Ahmed, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Reports this month indicate that many hijacker e-mails have been recovered. USA Today reports many unencrypted e-mails coordinating the 9/11 plans written by the hijackers in Internet cafes have been recovered by investigators. [USA Today, 10/1/2001] FBI sources say, “[H]undreds of e-mails linked to the hijackers in English, Arabic and Urdu” have been recovered, with some messages including “operational details” of the attack. [Washington Post, 10/4/2001] “A senior FBI official says investigators have obtained hundreds of e-mails in English and Arabic, reflecting discussions of the planned September 11 hijackings.” [Wall Street Journal, 10/16/2001] However, in April 2002, FBI Director Mueller says no documentation of the 9/11 plot has been found. By September 2002, the Chicago Tribune reports, “Of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of e-mails sent and received by the hijackers from public Internet terminals, none is known to have been recovered.” [Chicago Tribune, 9/5/2002] The texts of some e-mails sent by Mohamed Atta from Germany are published a few months later. [Chicago Tribune, 2/25/2003]
Entity Tags: Mohamed Atta, Robert S. Mueller III, Federal Bureau of Investigation
A poster to help law enforcement officers locate the missing “black boxes” in the WTC debris. [Source: FBI/Smithsonian Institution]According to two men who work extensively in the wreckage of the World Trade Center, three of the four black boxes from Flight 11 and Flight 175 are actually found during this month, but the public is not told. New York City Firefighter Nicholas DeMasi will mention the finding in a book published in 2003. He claims to drive federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle during their search and to see the found boxes himself. The Philadelphia Daily News will report on the story in 2004 when another rescue worker, volunteer Mike Bellone, backs up DeMasi’s account and claims to have seen one of the boxes as well. Spokesmen for the FBI and the New York City Fire Department will deny the claims of these two workers. [Philadelphia Daily News, 10/28/2004] In 2005, it will be reported: “A source at the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that has the task of deciphering the date from the black boxes retrieved from crash sites—including those that are being handled as crimes and fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI—says the boxes were in fact recovered and were analyzed by the NTSB. ‘Off the record, we had the boxes,’ the source says. ‘You’d have to get the official word from the FBI as to where they are, but we worked on them here.’” An NTSB spokesperson denies that the FBI ever gave them the boxes. [CounterPunch, 12/19/2005]
Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Nicholas DeMasi, Mike Bellone, National Transportation Safety Board, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York City Fire Department
A classified FBI report on this date indicates that alleged hijacker associate Osama Basnan has long-time links to both the bin Laden family and the Saudi government. The report states that Basnan has “been determined to have known Osama bin Laden’s family in Saudi Arabia and to have telephonic contact with members of bin Laden’s family who are currently in the US.” It also states, “The possibility of [Basnan] being affiliated with the Saudi Arabian Government or the Saudi Arabian Intelligence Service is supported by [Basnan] listing his employment in 1992 as the—.” Unfortunately, the rest of that sentence remains redacted. The report further notes that the fact that in July 2001 Basnan moved into the same San Diego apartment building where hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, and hijacker associate Omar al-Bayoumi lived right after al-Bayoumi moved away “could indicate he succeeded Omar al-Bayoumi and may be undertaking activities on behalf of the Government of Saudi Arabia” (see June 23-July 2001). The FBI report, which will be obtained by the website Intelwire.com in 2008, is heavily redacted, and all mentions of Basnan’s name appear to be redacted. However, one can sometimes determine when Basnan is being referred to. For instance, the same paragraph that mentions his link to the bin Laden family also says the same person with that link hosted a party for Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman in 1992, and press reports have indicated that person was Basnan (see October 17, 1992). [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 10/3/2001 ]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Osama Basnan, Omar Abdul-Rahman, Omar al-Bayoumi
Category Tags: Bayoumi and Basnan Saudi Connection, Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden Family, FBI 9/11 Investigation
A confidential list of people suspected of helping the al-Qaeda terrorist network leaks out on the Internet. The list of 370 individuals was put together by the FBI and European security agencies, and had been circulated to central banks and government financial authorities cooperating in the fight against terrorism. The 22-page document is posted on the website of Finland’s Financial Supervision Authority, RATA. [Daily Telegraph, 10/5/2001; United Press International, 10/11/2001] It is the most extensive list of its kind yet made public by authorities anywhere in the world. [Helsingin Sanomat, 10/5/2001] Some of its entries include only a name. [United Press International, 10/11/2001] But, in many cases, aliases, last known addresses, dates of birth, and sometimes phone numbers are given. Many of the addresses are in the United States—with Florida featuring extensively—or Germany, particularly Hamburg. [Helsingin Sanomat, 10/4/2001; Daily Telegraph, 10/5/2001] More than 300 of the names on the list came from US sources, and are listed with US addresses or Social Security numbers. Out of the 370 individuals, all of whom have Arab names, the FBI and other security authorities have identified the nationalities of 163. Saudi Arabians form the largest group, with 59 being on the list. The FBI has been unable to identify the nationality of the other 207 individuals. According to UPI, “With the exception of the two Americans [on the list], all of those listed would have had to apply for American visas in their home countries to enter the United States legally. Yet the spreadsheet’s sparse information seemed to indicate that the FBI apparently had been unable to locate the information that these applications normally would contain.” At least 77 of those on the list lived near flight schools. Many of the individuals have aliases, with some having up to 20. [United Press International, 10/11/2001] The list includes all 19 of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, who are mostly listed as “possibly deceased.” It also includes al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. It will be removed from the RATA website within 24 hours, at the recommendation of the Finnish data protection commissioner. The London Daily Telegraph cautions, “Like any police intelligence file,” the list “is based on hearsay and unverified leads, and should have been kept strictly confidential to protect those falsely accused. It is far from clear whether the telephone numbers or email addresses are reliable.” For example, “A random call to a suspect in Vero Beach, Florida, was answered by the receptionist of a commercial law firm, who angrily slammed down the receiver.” [RATA, 10/3/2001 ; Daily Telegraph, 10/5/2001; Helsingin Sanomat, 10/5/2001]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Al-Qaeda, RATA
It is reported that the FBI and Justice Department have ordered FBI agents across the US to cut back on their investigation of the September 11 attacks, so as to focus on preventing future, possibly imminent, attacks. According to the New York Times, while law enforcement officials say the investigation of 9/11 is continuing aggressively, “At the same time… efforts to thwart attacks have been given a much higher priority.” Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller “have ordered agents to drop their investigation of the [9/11] attacks or any other assignment any time they learn of a threat or lead that might suggest a future attack.” Mueller believes his agents have “a broad understanding of the events of September 11,” and now need “to concentrate on intelligence suggesting that other terrorist attacks [are] likely.” The Times quotes an unnamed law enforcement official: “The investigative staff has to be made to understand that we’re not trying to solve a crime now. Our number one goal is prevention.” [New York Times, 10/9/2001] At a news conference the previous day, Ashcroft stated that—following the commencement of the US-led attacks on Afghanistan—he had placed federal law enforcement on the highest level of alert. But he refused to say if he had received any specific new threats of terrorist attacks. [US Department of Justice, 10/8/2001] The New York Times also reports that Ashcroft and Mueller have ordered FBI agents to end their surveillance of some terrorist suspects and immediately take them into custody. However, some agents have been opposed to this order because they believe that “surveillance—if continued for days or weeks—might turn up critical evidence to prove who orchestrated the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.” [New York Times, 10/9/2001] Justice Department communications director Mindy Tucker responds to the New York Times article, saying it “is not accurate,” and that the investigation into 9/11 “has not been curtailed, it is ongoing.” [United Press International, 10/9/2001]
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, John Ashcroft, Mindy Tucker, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III
It is reported that Globe Aviation Services Corp., in charge of the baggage handlers for Flight 11 and all other American Airlines Flights at Boston’s Logan Airport, have been cleared of any wrongdoing. Globe Aviation supervisors claim that none of the employees working that day was in the US illegally. Supposedly, no weapons were detected, but a baggage handler for Globe Aviation and American Airlines has told the FBI that one of the hijackers—believed to be either Wail or Waleed Alshehri—was carrying one wooden crutch under his arm when he boarded Flight 11. Crutches are apparently routinely scanned through X-ray machines. [Boston Globe, 10/10/2001]
Entity Tags: Logan Airport, American Airlines, Globe Aviation Services Corp., Federal Bureau of Investigation, Wail Alshehri, Waleed M. Alshehri
According to an FBI report, “FBI investigators have officially concluded that 11 of the 19 terrorists who hijacked the aircraft on September 11 did not know they were on a suicide mission.” “Unlike the eight ‘lead’ attackers, who were all trained pilots, they did not leave messages for friends and family indicating they knew their lives were over,” and they did not have copies of Mohamed Atta’s final prayer note (see September 28, 2001). Personal items found suggest the men thought they were taking part in a conventional hijacking and were preparing for the possibility of prison. [Observer, 10/14/2001] This is later contradicted by video filmed in Afghanistan in March 2001 showing several of the 11 non-lead hijackers proclaiming their willingness to die on an upcoming suicide mission (see March 2001).
It is reported that Attorney General John Ashcroft and his Justice Department is assuming control of all terrorism-related prosecutions from the US Attorney’s office in New York, which has had a highly successful record of accomplishment in prosecuting cases connected to bin Laden. 15 of the 22 suspects listed on a most wanted terrorism list a month after 9/11 had already been indicted by the New York office in recent years. A former federal prosecutor says of the New York office, “For eight years, they have developed an expertise in these prosecutions and the complex facts that surround these groups. If ever there was a case where you’d want to play to your strength, this is it.” [New York Times, 10/11/2001] A grand jury in the New York district began investigating the 9/11 attacks one week after 9/11. But media accounts of this grand jury’s activity stop by late October 2001 and there appears to be no other grand jury taking its place (see September 18, 2001).
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice, Osama bin Laden
Timeline Tags: 9/11 Timeline, Civil Liberties
Yassin al-Qadi, a Saudi multimillionaire businessman, was officially declared a terrorist financier in October 2001 (see October 12, 2001). [Arab News, 9/26/2002] That same month, a number of employees at Ptech, a Boston-based computer company that al-Qadi and other individuals suspected of financing officially designated terrorist groups invested in (see 1994), tell the Boston FBI about the connections between Ptech and al-Qadi. However, FBI agents do little more than take their statements. A high-level government source later will claim the FBI does not convey the Ptech-al-Qadi link to Operation Greenquest, a Customs Department investigation into al-Qadi and other suspected financiers, and none of the government agencies using Ptech software are warned about the possible security threat Ptech represents. [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] According to a private counterterrorism expert involved in investigating Ptech at the time, “Frighteningly, when an employee told [Ptech president Oussama Ziade] he felt he had to contact the FBI regarding al-Qadi’s involvement in the company, the president allegedly told him not to worry because Yaqub Mirza, who was on the board of directors of the company and was himself a target of a [Greenquest] terrorist financing raid in March 2002 (see March 20, 2002), had contacts high within the FBI.” [National Review, 5/27/2003] A Ptech investigation will finally begin in 2002 after more whistleblowers come forward (see May-December 5, 2002).
Entity Tags: US Customs Service, Yacub Mirza, Operation Greenquest, Yassin al-Qadi, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ptech Inc., Oussama Ziade
Category Tags: Terrorism Financing, BMI and Ptech, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel is arrested and held for five months after investigators discover he worked at a restaurant where Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi sometimes ate lunch in South Florida. In a sworn statement, Michael Rolince, head of the FBI’s International Terrorism Operations Section, says, “It is likely that Bellahouel would have waited on both Atta and Alshehhi since Bellahouel had worked at the restaurant for 10 months, and both Atta and Alshehhi were frequent patrons during shifts that Bellahouel worked.” Rolince also alleges Bellahouel may have waited on a third hijacker, Saeed Alghamdi, and says that a cinema employee claims Bellahouel saw a film with a fourth hijacker, Ahmed Alnami. However, Bellahouel, who denies going to the cinema with Alnami, has trouble gaining access to the evidence used against him. His attorney comments, “They won’t call it secret evidence and they won’t call it classified, but they won’t give it to you, either.” He is held in prison without bond and without charge from October 15, 2001 to March 1, 2002. After he is released, US authorities attempt to deport him, as he entered the US as a student, but then dropped out of college and started work, marrying a US citizen in June 2001. His attorney says the problem is that he is a Muslim. “If he were a Catholic coming from Venezuela or Colombia, they would have let him adjust his immigration status.” Bellahouel sues the government over his incarceration, but the case is shrouded in secrecy and the press only learns the case is ongoing due to a court error. [Miami Daily Business Review, 3/14/2003] For example, a journalist, who does not event know Bellahouel’s name, attempts to attend a hearing in March 2003. But the court is closed. After some effort, the reporter finally finds the name in the electronic docket. When he tells a court official Bellahouel’s name is on the docket, the official replies, “Is it? We’ll have to fix that, too,” and the name disappears. [Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, 12/2004] In February 2004 the Supreme Court declines an appeal from Bellahouel to have an open hearing, and media organizations are prevented from accessing sealed court proceedings. [New York Times, 1/5/2004; CNN, 2/23/2004]
Entity Tags: Marwan Alshehhi, Michael Rolince, Ahmed Alnami, Mohamed Kamel Bellahouel, Saeed Alghamdi, Mohamed Atta
Mohammed Azmath, left, and Syed Gul Mohammad Shah/ Ayub Ali Khan, right. [Source: Associated Press]The New York Times reports that, although 830 people have been arrested in the 9/11 terrorism investigation (a number that eventually exceeds between 1,200 and 2,000 (see November 5, 2001), there is no evidence that anyone now in custody was a conspirator in the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore, “none of the nearly 100 people still being sought by the [FBI] is seen as a major suspect.” Of all the people arrested, only four, Zacarias Moussaoui, Ayub Ali Khan, Mohammed Azmath, and Nabil al-Marabh, are likely connected to al-Qaeda. [New York Times, 10/21/2001] Three of those are later cleared of ties to al-Qaeda. After being kept in solitary confinement for more than eight months without seeing a judge or being assigned a lawyer, al-Marabh pleads guilty to the minor charge of entering the United States illegally (see September 3, 2002) and is deported to Syria (see January 2004). There is considerable evidence al-Marabh did have ties to al-Qaeda and even the 9/11 plot (see September 2000; January 2001-Summer 2001; January 2001-Summer 2001; Spring 2001; Early September 2001). [Washington Post, 6/12/2002; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 8/27/2002] On September 12, 2002, after a year in solitary confinement and four months before he was able to contact a lawyer, Mohammed Azmath pleads guilty to one count of credit card fraud, and is released with time served. Ayub Ali Khan, whose real name is apparently Syed Gul Mohammad Shah, is given a longer sentence for credit card fraud, but is released and deported by the end of 2002. [Village Voice, 9/25/2002; New York Times, 12/31/2002] By December 2002, only 6 are known to still be in custody, and none have been charged with any terrorist acts (see December 11, 2002). On September 24, 2001, Newsweek reported that “the FBI has privately estimated that more than 1,000 individuals—most of them foreign nationals—with suspected terrorist ties are currently living in the United States.” [Newsweek, 10/1/2001]
Entity Tags: Nabil al-Marabh, Al-Qaeda, Mohammed Azmath, Syed Gul Mohammad Shah, Zacarias Moussaoui, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Furious government intelligence officials accuse the NSA of destroying data pertinent to the 9/11 investigation. They claim that possible leads are not being followed because of the NSA’s lack of cooperation. [Boston Globe, 10/27/2001]
Entity Tags: National Security Agency
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, Remote Surveillance
The Justice Department announces that it has put 1,182 people into secret custody since 9/11. Most all of them are from the Middle East or South Asia. [New York Times, 8/3/2002] After this it stops releasing new numbers, but human rights groups believe the total number could be as high as 2,000. [Independent, 2/26/2002] Apparently this is roughly the peak for secret arrests, and eventually most of the prisoners are released, and none are charged with any terrorist acts (see July 3, 2002; December 11, 2002). Their names will still not have been revealed (see August 2, 2002).
Entity Tags: US Department of Justice
Timeline Tags: Torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, 9/11 Timeline, Civil Liberties
Aysel Senguen. [Source: CBC]Authorities in the US discover a letter apparently written by Flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah. It is believed the four-page letter, dated September 10, was written just hours before the 9/11 attacks. It is part of a package Jarrah mailed from the US to his Turkish girlfriend Aysel Senguen, a medical student living in the western German city of Bochum. The letter says, “I have done what I had to do.… You should be very proud, because it is an honor and in the end you will see that everyone will be happy.” It adds, “Hold on to what you have until we see each other again.” The package arrived in Germany shortly after September 11. However, due to Jarrah having made an error in writing the address, it was returned to the US and ended up in the hands of the FBI. Oddly, considering the letter is supposedly Jarrah’s farewell to Senguen, the rest of his package reportedly includes papers about his flight training and scuba-diving instructions. It is believed to also contain some small presents. Ziad’s uncle Jamal Jarrah says he thinks the letter is fabricated, and that it is suspicious that the address on it contained a mistake, as Ziad had known his girlfriend for five years and would not have made such an error. [Associated Press, 11/17/2001; Los Angeles Times, 11/18/2001; Observer, 11/18/2001; Daily Telegraph, 11/18/2001; BBC, 11/19/2001]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jamal Jarrah, Aysel Senguen, Ziad Jarrah
The remains of all but one of the people on board Flight 77, including the hijackers, are identified. However, the identities of the hijackers have still not been confirmed through their remains, and the FBI does not provide DNA profiles of the hijackers to medical examiners for identification. [NFPA Journal, 11/1/2001; Washington Post, 11/21/2001; Mercury, 1/11/2002] As of mid-2004, there still have been no reports that the hijackers’ remains have been identified by their DNA, except possibly for two unnamed hijackers.
The Boston Globe reports information strongly suggesting that at least one hijacker was inside each of the cockpits when the hijackings began. An airplane captain theorizes how they took control: “The most likely scenarios are something that was swift, where the pilots couldn’t have changed their transponder code and called the controllers. You think four times in one morning one of those crews would have done that. That means they had to be upon them before they could react.” On practice flights before 9/11, the hijackers repeatedly obtained access to cockpits by various methods. Perhaps the most important method was jumpseating, which allows certified airline pilots to use a spare seat in the cockpit when none is available in the passenger cabin. Airlines reciprocate to help pilots get home or to the city of their originating flight. Officials say they do not believe any of the hijackers were jumpseating on 9/11 despite media reports to the contrary. However, since 9/11 the FAA has banned the practice unless a pilot works for the airline in whose cockpit that person wants to ride. [Boston Globe, 11/23/2001] The 9/11 Commission later concludes that the hijackers didn’t use jumpseating because they couldn’t find any paperwork relating to jumpseat requests.
Entity Tags: Federal Aviation Administration, 9/11 Commission
The FBI reveals that it knows what is on the Flight 93 black boxes, but refuses to release the transcript or audio recording. Families of the victims have requested to hear the cockpit voice recording, but the FBI says, “[W]e do not believe that the horror captured on the cockpit voice recording will console them in any way.” [CNN, 12/21/2001] Accuracy in Media immediately submits a Freedom of Information Act request to have the transcript released, but the FBI turns it down because a release “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.” The Philadelphia Daily News asks, “What enforcement proceedings?” and suggests the FBI may be covering up a shootdown of the plane. [Philadelphia Daily News, 12/28/2001] The recordings are later played, but only in private to victims’ relatives and the 9/11 Commission.
Entity Tags: 9/11 Commission, Federal Bureau of Investigation
The FBI interviews Qualid Benomrare, an Arabic-speaking taxi driver who had done chauffeur work for the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles. Benomrare is shown pictures of young Arab men and asked if he recognizes any of them. He quickly picks hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar out of the line-up. After realizing they were 9/11 hijackers, he denies knowing them. The FBI asks him about his ties to Fahad al Thumairy, an official at the Saudi consulate suspected of a link with those two hijackers. Benomrare says that al Thumairy introduced him to two young Saudi men who had just arrived in the US and needed help. Benomrare drove them to places in Los Angeles and San Diego, including Sea World, a theme park in San Diego. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 309] (Curiously, these two hijackers bought season passes to Sea World.) [Los Angeles Times, 9/1/2002] 9/11 Commission staffers will later conclude it is highly likely that the two men were Alhazmi and Almihdhar, despite Benomrare’s later denial. This would mean al Thumairy knew the two hijackers. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 309] However, the 9/11 Commission will fail to mention anything about this in their final report.
Entity Tags: Nawaf Alhazmi, Khalid Almihdhar, Fahad al Thumairy, Qualid Benomrare
Category Tags: Alhazmi and Almihdhar, Bayoumi and Basnan Saudi Connection, Saudi Arabia, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Egyptian national Abdallah Higazy (see December 17, 2001), who has falsely confessed to owning a transceiver that may connect him to the 9/11 plot in order to save his family from being tortured (see December 27, 2001), is charged with making false statements connected to the 9/11 attacks. Higazy has given three different versions of how he obtained the radio; the FBI is sure he is lying about not being complicit in the plot. Three days after Higazy is charged, an airline pilot from Ohio claims the suspect transceiver as his own, and unknowingly vindicates Higazy. Higazy is released two days later, and a hotel security guard is eventually charged with lying to the FBI about the location of the radio. Higazy’s lawyer, Jonathan Abady, later says: “What if that pilot had not walked into the Millennium Hotel? We know that Mr. Higazy could have spent the rest of his life in prison.” In 2007, Higazy will say that he chose to confess to the ownership of the suspect transceiver because he knew the FBI could have his family turned over to Egyptian intelligence agents for torture. “I knew I couldn’t prove my innocence, and I knew my family was in danger,” he will recall. “If I say this device is mine, I’m screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And [FBI] Agent [Michael] Templeton made it quite clear that ‘cooperate’ had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.” Higazy’s subsequent lawsuit against the hotel (prompted by a hotel employee lying to the FBI about him) will eventually be settled out of court; his suit against the FBI will still be pending in October 2007 (see October 18, 2007). [Washington Post, 10/25/2007]
Entity Tags: Michael Templeton, Abdallah Higazy, Jonathan Abady, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Timeline Tags: Torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere
The FBI allows relatives of passengers on Flight 93 to listen to the 31-minutes of tape from the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and see a written transcript of the recording. About 70 relatives do so. They are allowed to take notes, but not to make recordings because the tape might be used in the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. [CNN, 4/19/2002; Guardian, 4/19/2002; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/21/2002] The San Francisco Chronicle responds: “Is there even a dollop of logic in that explanation? It’s like saying we can’t watch video of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center because that video might be used in a trial.” [San Francisco Chronicle, 6/3/2002] Much of the tape is reportedly unintelligible. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “the voices were muddled and the ambient noise of the wind rushing by the speeding plane often made it impossible to distinguish individuals, even when they were yelling.” [Daily Telegraph, 4/20/2002; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/21/2002] New York Times reporter Jere Longman writes the book Among The Heroes based in part on interviews with relatives who hear the cockpit voice recording, along with several government officials and investigators. The recording reveals new details of the passengers’ struggle on board Flight 93, but the government still has not officially stated if it believes they took over the plane or not. [Washington Post, 4/19/2002; MSNBC, 7/30/2002; Daily Telegraph, 7/31/2002]
Entity Tags: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Zacarias Moussaoui, Jere Longman
FBI Director Mueller states: “In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper either here in the United States or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot.” He also claims that the attackers used “extraordinary secrecy” and “investigators have found no computers, laptops, hard drives or other storage media that may have been used by the hijackers, who hid their communications by using hundreds of pay phones and cell phones, coupled with hard-to-trace prepaid calling cards.” [Federal Bureau of Investigation, 4/19/2002; Los Angeles Times, 4/22/2002] However, before 9/11 CIA Director Tenet told the Senate that al-Qaeda is “embracing the opportunities offered by recent leaps in information technology” [US Congress, 3/21/2000] ; the FBI broke the al-Qaeda computer encryption before February 2001 [United Press International, 2/13/2001] ; witnesses report seeing the hijackers use computers for e-mail at public libraries in Florida and Maine [South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 9/16/2001; Boston Herald, 10/5/2001] ; in October 2001 there were many reports that hundreds of e-mails discussing the 9/11 plot had been found; Moussaoui’s laptop was found to contain important information, etc.…
Entity Tags: Robert S. Mueller III, Al-Qaeda, Federal Bureau of Investigation, George J. Tenet
Indira Singh. [Source: Michael Kane]In October 2001, Ptech insiders attempted to warn the FBI that suspected terrorist financier Yassin al-Qadi had funded Ptech (see Shortly After October 12, 2001). Then Indira Singh, an employee at JP Morgan Chase bank, develops her own suspicions about Ptech after her bank assigned her to investigate Ptech for a potential business deal. In May 2002, she speaks with the FBI about her concerns. Weeks later, she learns the FBI still has not told any other government agencies about the potential Ptech security threat. She later will recall, “the language, the kind of language law enforcement, counterterrorism, and the FBI agents themselves were using basically indicated to me that absolutely no investigation was going on, that it was totally at a standstill, at which point my hair stood on end.” She contacts a Boston CBS television station, WBZ-TV, and a reporter for the station named Joe Bergantino begins investigating Ptech. [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; National Public Radio, 12/8/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Around the same time, a former government official with contacts in the Bush administration tells officials at the National Security Council about the Ptech allegations. By late August, Operation Greenquest then opens its own Ptech investigation. The FBI then tries “to muscle its way back into the probe once it [becomes] clear that [Greenquest is] taking the case seriously.” [Newsweek, 12/6/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002] Beginning in late November, US agents begin calling Ptech officials and asking them if they have ties to money laundering, thus tipping them off. Ptech will also be notified when a December raid will be occurring before it happens. [Associated Press, 1/3/2003] WBZ-TV prepared a story on Ptech, but withheld it from the public for more than three months after receiving “calls from federal law enforcement agencies, some at the highest levels.” The station claims the government launched its Ptech probe in August 2002, after they “got wind of our investigation” and “asked us to hold the story so they could come out and do their raid and look like they’re ahead of the game.” [Boston Globe, 12/7/2002; WBZ 4 (Boston), 12/9/2002]
Entity Tags: Operation Greenquest, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ptech Inc., National Security Council, Indira Singh
Category Tags: BMI and Ptech, Terrorism Financing, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Walid Arkeh. [Source: Orlando Sentinel / Bureau of Prisons]Walid Arkeh, a prisoner in Florida, is interviewed by a group of FBI agents in New York City. The agents seek information regarding the 1988 US embassy bombings and are there to interview him about information he learned from three al-Qaeda prisoners he had befriended. During the interview, Arkeh claims that, in August 2001, he told the FBI that al-Qaeda was likely to attack the WTC and other targets soon, but he was dismissed (see August 21, 2001). After 9/11, his warning still was not taken seriously by the local FBI. The New York FBI agents are stunned. One says to him: “Let me tell you something. If you know what happened in New York, we are all in deep sh_t. We are in deep trouble.” Arkeh tells the agents that these prisoners hinted that the WTC would be attacked, and targets in Washington were mentioned as well. However, they did not tell him a date or that airplanes would be used. The New York FBI later will inform him that they find his information credible. [Orlando Sentinel, 10/30/2002] Arkeh is later deported to Jordan despite a Responsible Cooperators Program promising visas to those who provided important information to US-designated terrorist groups. (It is unclear whether any one ever has been given a reward through this program.) [Orlando Sentinel, 11/10/2002; Orlando Sentinel, 1/11/2003; Orlando Sentinel, 3/12/2003]
Entity Tags: World Trade Center, Walid Arkeh, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Al-Qaeda
Category Tags: Warning Signs, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Journalist Seymour Hersh writes in the New Yorker, “In a recent conversation, a senior FBI official acknowledged that there had been ‘no breakthrough’ inside the government, in terms of establishing how the September 11th suicide teams were organized and how they operated.” The recent war in Afghanistan “has yet to produce significant information about the planning and execution of the attacks. US forces are known to have captured thousands of pages of documents and computer hard drives from al-Qaeda redoubts, but so far none of this material—which remains highly classified—has enabled the Justice Department to broaden its understanding of how the attack occurred, or even to bring an indictment of a conspirator.” [New Yorker, 5/27/2002] It has never been made clear if, how, and/or when the FBI subsequently made a breakthrough in understanding the 9/11 plot.
Wallace Miller, the coroner in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed on 9/11, is contacted by an uncle of one of the Flight 93 hijackers, who asks him if any remains of his nephew have been recovered. According to Miller: “I got a call from Beirut at 4 a.m. He said he was an uncle of one of them and wanted to know what the situation was. I said if he sent a DNA sample, we’d make a cross-reference to confirm, but I never heard anything more from him.” In 2008, Miller will say that he cannot recall the name of the caller or who his nephew was. However, only one of the Flight 93 hijackers—Ziad Jarrah—was from Beirut, while the others were apparently Saudis (see 1980s and 1990s). Miller will say that the uncle’s inquiry was apparently prompted by a British or South African journalist who had put the man on the phone after interviewing him about the events of 9/11. This appears to be the only attempt ever made by a relative to claim the remains of a hijacker (see September 21, 2008). [New York Times, 9/21/2008]
Entity Tags: Wallace Miller, Ziad Jarrah
A rare follow-up article about insider trading based on 9/11 foreknowledge confirms that numerous inquiries in the US and around the world are still ongoing. However, “all are treating these inquiries as if they were state secrets.” The author speculates: “The silence from the investigating camps could mean any of several things: Either terrorists are responsible for the puts on the airline stocks; others besides terrorists had foreknowledge; the puts were just lucky bets by credible investors; or, there is nothing whatsoever to support the insider-trading rumors.” [Insight, 6/3/2002] Another article notes that Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, purchased at least some of these options. Deutsche Bank Alex Brown was once headed by “Buzzy” Krongard, who quit that company in March 2001 and became Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). “This fact may not be significant. And then again, it may. After all, there has traditionally been a close link between the CIA, big banks, and the brokerage business.” [Business Line, 2/11/2002]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Deutsche Bank, A.B. (“Buzzy”) Krongard
Category Tags: Insider Trading/ Foreknowledge, Other 9/11 Investigations, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Zacarias Moussaoui indicates that he is willing to disclose information to the US authorities, but his overtures are rejected by the FBI and the Justice Department. After learning of Moussaoui’s offer, Minneapolis FBI counsel Coleen Rowley contacts assistants to FBI director Robert Mueller and to Justice Department manager Michael Chertoff. She says she is worried about Moussaoui’s research into cropdusting and wind patterns, and that the information he could provide may prove useful averting a second strike by al-Qaeda. Rowley will later comment: “But by that time Moussaoui had been charged with the death penalty and I deduced that [attorney general John] Ashcroft would not allow any potential for bargaining leverage to be injected into the case.” [Huffington Post, 5/2/2007]
Entity Tags: Michael Chertoff, Coleen Rowley, FBI Minnesota field office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, John Ashcroft, Zacarias Moussaoui, Robert S. Mueller III, US Department of Justice
Category Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, FBI 9/11 Investigation
Although US authorities are aware that Zacarias Moussaoui has one e-mail account and recover e-mails from it, he now says that he has another two, but the FBI is unable to find any trace of them (see August 17-November 11, 2001 and After). E-mails sent from the first address, pilotz123@hotmail.com, have been recovered and will be produced at his trial. However, the other two addresses, xdesertman@hotmail.com and olimahammed@hotmail.com, were not uncovered by the FBI’s post-9/11 investigation and US authorities only learn of them from a statement made at this time by Moussaoui, who says the e-mails could provide him with an alibi and that he accessed the accounts from various computers, including his laptop, one at a Kinko’s outlet, and one at the University of Oklahoma. However, Microsoft, which operates Hotmail, says it is unable to locate any records of the accounts and that they do not exist. As the accounts have been inactive for over a year and all data for a hotmail account is deleted after 90 days of inactivity, no e-mails can be retrieved. Had the FBI asked Microsoft about the addresses within the 90-day period, they may have found information about the e-mails, but they did not do so because they did not know about them—the FBI decided not to interview Moussaoui after 9/11 (see September 11-12, 2001 and Early July 2002). The hard drives at the Kinko’s outlet had been wiped by the time the FBI arrived in September 2001 and no record of Moussaoui’s computer use there is found. Moussaoui had a receipt for the Kinko’s outlet with him when he was arrested, so the FBI might have been able to examine the Kinko’s computers before the hard drives were wiped if they had acted more promptly (see August 17-November 11, 2001 and After). [Wired News, 8/30/2002; internetnews (.com), 8/30/2002; CNN, 9/4/2002; CNN, 12/31/2002; US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006]
Entity Tags: Zacarias Moussaoui, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Passaic County Sheriff Jerry Speziale. [Source: Triborochamber]A business owned by Mohamed el-Atriss, who supplied the 9/11 hijackers with fake IDs (see (July-August 2001)), is raided by the Passaic County Sheriff’s Department. The raids are carried out in a blaze of publicity and are strongly opposed by the US attorney’s office for New Jersey and the FBI, which has a relationship with el-Atriss (see July 31, 2002 and After, September 13, 2001-Mid 2002). [Bergen Record, 8/7/2002] The sheriff is suspicious of el-Atriss and raids his business because, in addition to providing hijackers Abdulaziz Alomari and Khalid Almihdhar with at least two pieces of fake ID, el-Atriss: Talked repeatedly on the phone to another hijacker (see (July-August 2001)); Is an associate of an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 ‘Landmarks’ bomb plot (see Before September 11, 2001); Wired $29,000 to the Arab National Bank in Mecca in 2002; [Washington Post, 1/3/2003] Made inquiries to a parts manufacturer about navigational systems for commercial jetliners to be shipped to Egypt in 1999; [Newark Star-Ledger, 10/20/2003] Downloaded a list of the 9/11 hijackers from the Internet after 9/11, underlined some names, and circled Khalid Almihdhar’s. [Newark Star-Ledger, 10/20/2003] El-Atriss is not present during the raid, having traveled to Egypt a short time before, but later returns to the US and is arrested at JFK airport in New York. [CBS News, 7/31/2002; BBC, 8/21/2002] He will later say that he came back to the US to clear his name after learning of the raid while in Egypt. He will be charged with over two dozen counts of selling false documents. [Newark Star-Ledger, 10/20/2003] Secret evidence will be used against him at the trial. He will plead guilty to one of charges, while the rest will be dropped. (see November 2002-June 2003).
Entity Tags: Mohamed el-Atriss, Khalid Almihdhar, Passaic County Sheriff’s Department
Category Tags: FBI 9/11 Investigation, Internal US Security After 9/11, Counterterrorism Action After 9/11
US attorney for New Jersey Christopher Christie opposed a raid on an associate of the 9/11 hijackers. [Source: Public domain]Both the FBI and the US attorney’s office for New Jersey are highly critical of a raid by the Passaic County sheriff’s office on the business of Mohamed el-Atriss, who supplied the 9/11 hijackers with false IDs (see (July-August 2001) and July 31, 2002). El-Atriss is later arrested and will plead guilty to selling fake IDs (see November 2002-June 2003). According to the sheriff, when US attorney for New Jersey Christopher Christie learns the sheriff intends to hold a news conference about the raid, he tells the sheriff that “he [will] be arrested and the US attorney [will] come down and shut down the Sheriff’s Department.” However, a spokesman for Christie will deny this. [Newark Star-Ledger, 10/20/2003] The FBI also hammers the sheriff in the media after the arrest, calling the raid, in which officers were accompanied by several press representatives, a “shameful media grab” and saying that the sheriff killed an FBI investigation. The Bergen County Record will point out that this is unusual, as “the feds don’t make a habit of lambasting other law enforcement officials publicly or of confirming the existence of secret investigations.” [Bergen Record, 8/7/2002] Federal officials then tell the sheriff’s department not to proceed with any investigations related to el-Atriss until they get clearance from the FBI. [Newark Star-Ledger, 10/20/2003] El-Atriss cooperated with the FBI after 9/11 and promised to “keep his eyes and ears open” for other terrorists (see September 13, 2001-Mid 2002).
Entity Tags: US Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey, Mohamed el-Atriss, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Christopher J. Christie, Passaic County Sheriff’s Department
Senator Richard Shelby. [Source: US Senate]The Washington Post reveals that FBI agents have questioned nearly all 37 senators and congresspeople making up the 9/1 Congressional Inquiry about 9/11-related information leaks. In particular, in June 2002 the media reported that the day before 9/11 the NSA intercepted the messages “The match is about to begin” and “Tomorrow is zero hour”(see September 10, 2001). The FBI has asked the members to submit to lie detector tests but most have refused. Congresspeople express “grave concern” for this historically unprecedented move. A law professor states: “Now the FBI can open dossiers on every member and staffer and develop full information on them. It creates a great chilling effect on those who would be critical of the FBI.” [Washington Post, 8/2/2002] Senator John McCain (R-AZ) suggests that “the constitutional separation of powers is being violated in spirit if not in the letter. ‘What you have here is an organization compiling dossiers on people who are investigating the same organization. The administration bitterly complains about some leaks out of a committee, but meanwhile leaks abound about secret war plans for fighting a war against Saddam Hussein. What’s that about? There’s a bit of a contradiction here, if not a double standard.’” [Washington Post, 8/3/2002] Later the search for the source of the leak intensifies to unprecedented levels as the FBI asks 17 senators to turn over phone records, appointment calendars, and schedules that would reveal their possible contact with reporters. [Washington Post, 8/24/2002] Most, if not all, turn over the records, even as some complain that the request breaches the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches. One senator says the FBI is “trying to put a damper on our activities and I think they will be successful.” [Associated Press, 8/29/2002] In January 2004, it will be reported that the probe is focusing on Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL). He will not be charged with any crime relating to the leak. [Washington Post, 1/22/2004] In November 2005, the Senate Ethics Committee will announce it has dropped a probe of Shelby, citing insufficient evidence. [Reuters, 11/13/2005] Inquiry co-chair Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) will write in a book in late 2004 that, at the time, he guessed “the leak was intended to sabotage [the inquiry’s] efforts. I am not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but the fact that we were hit with this disclosure at the moment we began to make things uncomfortable for the Bush administration has stuck with me. Over a year later, I asked [inquiry co-chair] Congressman [Porter] Goss (R-FL) whether he thought we had been set up. Nodding, he replied, ‘I often wonder that myself.’” [Graham and Nussbaum, 2004, pp. 140] Author Philip Shenon will observe that this tactic of intimidation worked, as “Members of the joint committee and their staffs were frightened into silence about the investigation.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 55]
Entity Tags: 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bob Graham, Philip Shenon, Porter J. Goss, Richard Shelby, John McCain, House Intelligence Committee
Category Tags: 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, FBI 9/11 Investigation
The top picture is of Waleed Alshehri. The bottom two pictures are said to be of hijackers planning the 9/11 attacks, but no faces are shown to help confirm this. [Source: Spiegel TV]Al Jazeera television broadcasts video footage in which bin Laden appears to take credit for the 9/11 attacks. Some of the video footage shows some 9/11 hijackers, including Ahmed Alnami, Hamza Alghamdi, Saeed Alghamdi, Waleed Alshehri, and Wail Alshehri, talking with each other and studying maps and flight manuals. At one point, hands are shown over maps of the US and the Pentagon, but no faces are shown. Al Jazeera says the video was filmed in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in early 2001. Additional footage has bin Laden hailing the hijackers as heroes, but there is no video footage of him saying this, only his voice over still photographs of the hijackers. The Financial Times will report, “But analysts cited the crude editing of the tapes and the timing of the broadcasts as reasons to be suspicious about their authenticity. The skepticism was deepened by Al Jazeera’s silence yesterday about how it had obtained the videos.” [Financial Times, 9/11/2002] Al Jazeera shows an interview of al-Qaeda leaders Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed around the same time (see September 8-11, 2002).
Entity Tags: Osama bin Laden, Hamza Alghamdi, Saeed Alghamdi, Wail Alshehri, Ahmed Alnami, Waleed M. Alshehri
Category Tags: Other 9/11 Hijackers, Osama Bin Laden, FBI 9/11 Investigation, Alleged Al-Qaeda Media Statements
Kristen Breitweiser. [Source: Hyungwon Kang/ Reuters]Two 9/11 victims’ relatives testify before the Congressional 9/11 inquiry. Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband Ronald died at the WTC, asks how the FBI was so quickly able to assemble information on the hijackers. She cites a New York Times article stating that agents descended on flight schools within hours of the attacks. “How did the FBI know where to go a few hours after the attacks?” she asks. “Were any of the hijackers already under surveillance?” [MSNBC, 9/18/2002] She adds, “Our intelligence agencies suffered an utter collapse in their duties and responsibilities leading up to and on September 11th. But their negligence does not stand alone. Agencies like the Port Authority, the City of NY, the FAA, the INS, the Secret Service, NORAD, the Air Force, and the airlines also failed our nation that morning.” [US Congress, 9/18/2002] Stephen Push states, “If the intelligence community had been doing its job, my wife, Lisa Raines, would be alive today.” He cites the government’s failure to place Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi on a terrorist watch list until long after they were photographed meeting with alleged al-Qaeda operatives in Malaysia (see January 5-8, 2000 and Shortly After). [MSNBC, 9/18/2002]
Entity Tags: Stephen Push, Secret Service, New York Port Au
