Two Saudi Passengers Aboard April 8 KLM Flight Had Attended the Same Arizona Flight School as a 9/11 hijacker; Mexico City-Bound Flight Returned to Amsterdam
Some U.S. Counterterrorism Officials Fear Latin America May Become Staging Ground for Al Qaeda
NEW YORK — On April 8, KLM Flight 685 took off from Amsterdam, scheduled to pass through U.S. airspace after making a long swing over Canada on its way to Mexico City. By the time the Boeing 747 had finished its three-hour crossing of the Atlantic, U.S. Department of Homeland Security screeners were on high alert. The names of two Saudi passengers aboard the flight had begun producing "hits" on the screening center’s list of 70,000 suspect foreigners. According to an FBI database of terror suspects known as TIPOFF, the two Saudis were brothers and pilots who had attended the same Arizona flight school as 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour, Investigative Correspondent Mark Hosenball and Senior Editor Michael Hirsh report in the April 25 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, April 18).
Soon the multiplicity of U.S. terror databases started pumping out similar hits. Fearing that Flight 685 might be a 9/11-style plot in the making, U.S. authorities refused the plane overflight rights, and Canada rejected a request to land. Much to the chagrin of its 278 passengers, the KLM jet returned to Amsterdam. Hosenball and Hirsh write that Washington’s concern about the flight seems legitimate. In the last year, U.S. counterterrorism officials have cited intelligence indicating that Al Qaeda might be planning to use foreign-based airliners to launch attacks against the U.S. homeland. One U.S. counterterrorism official told Newsweek that the two passengers were "bad dudes." And a European intelligence official said the two have "extensive but secondary links" to Al Qaeda.
At least one of the two Saudis had previously been deported from the United States, according to Homeland Security sources. A former neighbor in Arizona, who asked to remain anonymous, recalled that federal officials in full body armor rushed the Saudi’s empty house several weeks after 9/11 and later arrested him. During FBI questioning, a law-enforcement official told Newsweek, the Saudi acknowledged knowing Hani Hanjour. Upon further questioning, he also conceded that he had known another of the 9/11 hijackers.
Even so, by the end of last week, the reasons the Saudi brothers gave for their trip to Mexico appeared to be holding up, U.S. investigators conceded. The men told authorities they were visiting their ill father, a retired Saudi diplomat who is living in Mexico. A Saudi official in Riyadh later told Newsweek that the father was a former "administrative employee" of the Saudi foreign ministry, but that he has not worked for the government for 10 years and has a Mexican wife. One counterterrorism official said authorities were aware of the family and had been watching the brothers for some time, adding, "I just don’t think this was a plot along the lines of 9/11." Much as some intelligence officials insist that the Saudis have Qaeda links, no Western agency made a move to arrest them. (Because of the ambiguous nature of the case, Newsweek has decided not to publish their names.)
The fact that Europeans still tend to see counterterrorism as a law- enforcement problem partially explains why Dutch and other European authorities, lacking direct proof of a crime or plot, decided not to detain the two Saudis, report Hosenball and Hirsh. Yet even the Europeans aren’t completely on the same page. Officials with Dutch and U.S. intelligence say that after the two men arrived back in Amsterdam, they flew to London, where they were refused entry. Then they flew back to the Netherlands, where they were under surveillance before returning on their own to Saudi Arabia. British officials were later peeved that Dutch authorities failed to communicate to them the full tale of KLM 685. A Saudi official later told Newsweek the two men had been detained for questioning. Some counterterrorism officials say that if the two Saudis were indeed part of a Qaeda operation, it is no surprise their destination was Mexico City. U.S. officials fear that Latin America, and more particularly Mexico — with its porous U.S. border — may become a staging ground for Al Qaeda, report Hosenball and Hirsh.
What will it take to take our politicians to "get real" about this? A nuke in their neighborhood staged in Mexico just might be the incentive to wake them up, but it might be too late by the time they "get it together, Al Qaeda might blow us up and use those same porous borders to slip back." The Minutemen are heros in my book and IMHO deserve great credit for doing a job well done and highly supported by a majority of the American public.