New Suspect Charged in 9/11 Probe

Fox News ^ | 01-11-02

[consrv_at_IsraelForum_dot_com]

A man with an Egyptian passport who was staying in a hotel room overlooking the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 has been charged with lying to federal agents about a radio found in his room that could monitor conversations between pilots.

[illbenice]

'Could the 9/11 planes have been guided to their targets?"

I doubt it, the terroists would probaly have jumped out of the plane at some point. If that had happend it would have been reported by one of the passengers, most likely.

[angkor]

Wasn't this building severely damaged and closed off to the public?

Yes, it was. I'm not sure that it had structural damage, but the entire hotel was a mess. One of the news channels did a report on it from the inside, shortly after 9/11. It was very sad.

Presumably the management went through each and every room as a matter of due diligence at some point, and I would think they opened all of the safes. That would make sense under the circumstances, because certainly the guests were denied entry after the WTC collapse. The Millenium is literally across the street from WTC, the walk from the front lobby to the WTC Krispy Kream shop (now gone) was maybe 30 seconds. The hotel lobby and the second floor bar/cafe were full of trash and debris and several inches of dust.

Anyway it is a pity. The Millenium was a nice hotel, and my wife and I stayed there as recently as last February. Those in-the-room photos with WTC right outside our 40th floor window are looking fairly eerie right now.

[blam]

"(possibly even based upon up to the minute information from a 5th columnist in the White House press pool on board Air Force 1)..."

Yup. More to the story than we'll ever know.

[Fred Mertz]

A hotel security officer used a hotel override key to open the safe and found an air-band transceiver along with his Higazy's Egyptian passport and an Arabic book.

He also found a hand-held radio marketed for use by pilots that can be used for air-to-air and air-to ground communication with anyone who has a similar radio.

I can understand that this guy might be in the listen & monitoring mode for the operation and days leading up to it. But I can't see any possible need for him to be in the transmit mode with his radio. Can anyone enlighten me?

[RedneckCityBoy]

Yes, the rooms at the Millenium are expensive. I stayed there for business in April '00. It was last minute, it was the only place available, and corporate rooms were sold out. Charge for a single was $459 + another $63 in taxes. I was pretty impressed...and glad that someone else was paying the bill. Honestly I've stayed in nicer rooms for much less, but none of them were across the street from the WTC.

[mancini]

Hey, that sounds like a good idea!

[aristeides]

The Islamoterrorists presumably regarded all those caught in this country as expendable. Their practice is to have the big shots in a plot skip the country before the plot comes to fruition, as happened with the '93 WTC bombing and the '98 embassy bombings. A real big shot, like Ramzi Yousef, only gets caught if he's captured before a plot can be brought off, as happened to him in the Philippines.

I see the charge against this Egyptian guy is still only of lying to the FBI. So the charge is brought in the Southern District of New York, where the lying occurred. Once he is charged with being part of the 9/11 conspiracy, I expect to see his case consolidated with Moussaoui's, and brought in the Northern District of Virginia, in Alexandria.

[aristeides]

I wonder what hotels in D.C. might have a good view of the White House (or the Capitol,) and what Middle Eastern males were staying there the morning of 9/11.

[NativeNewYorker]

The Hay-Adams is the definitive White House view. I think any of the hotels along Pennsylvania Ave NW would offer views of the Capitol.

[aristeides]

Now consider that a similar terrorist could have been in Washington, relaying instructions to either of the two planes bound for that area (possibly even based upon up to the minute information from a 5th columnist in the White House press pool on board Air Force 1)...

Would such transmissions in Washington have been on a frequency that the NSA would monitor, intercept, and record?

[aristeides]

If he's monitoring other frequencies, he might be in a position to order the plane(s) to alternate target(s) at the last moment. That may have been what happened in D.C.

[aristeides]

I've thought a bit about your suggestion. I think transmissions of the kind you are suggesting in D.C. on the morning of 9/11 -- if they had been intercepted -- might have been enough to cause an atmosphere of panic in the government, and have led to the decision to keep Air Force One out of town for so long. The administration's story that it had received a message from the terrorists indicating a knowledge of its codewords and procedures was always puzzling -- why would the terrorists give away the fact that they had such knowledge? If, on the other hand, it had been intercepted communications that revealed such knowledge, that would make a lot more sense.

[aristeides]

Likeliest alternate target in NYC that occurs to me is the UN (which bin Laden is known to hate, for some reason.)

[aristeides]

What is the Egyptian Air Corps? Is that like our Civil Air Patrol? Seems to me the Egyptian police ought now to check out how many members of that organization in fact belong to Egyptian Islamic Jihad and/or the Egyptian Islamic Group (al-Gama'a al Islamiyah).

[aristeides]

FYI.

[xkaydet65]

Your point is interesting. I've felt that the second plane was not necesarily aimed at the South Tower. The terrorists may have believed that one plane going 450-500 knots may have toppled one tower into the other. Plane two may have targeted Empire State or Statue of Liberty and it may have been directed to the South Tower by a message from our Egyptian friend that one tower was undamaged. Also notice that plane 2 came in lower and hit at an angle as its wings extended across several floors. Maybe this was suggested by our Egyptian hotel guest.

In any event this guy better get the complete work up from the investigators. He may be an innocent visitor, he could be a very big piece of the puzzle.

[aristeides]

Related thread.

[KC_for_Freedom]

Muslims MUST live in an alternate universe.

Bump for this most excellent observation.

[Travis McGee]

MAKE him talk.

[Southack]

Yup.