http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,729049,00.html
Hijacker 'applied for US plane loan'
Staff and agencies
Friday June 7, 2002
Excerpt
A US government official has claimed that September 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta applied for a $650,000 government loan to buy a small plane and fit it with a large chemical tank one and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington.
Johnell Bryant, a loan officer at a US department of agriculture office in south Florida, said Atta visited her in the spring of 2000, saying he had just arrived from Afghanistan and hoped to get his pilot's licence and buy a plane to use for charter flights and for crop dusting.
"He wanted to finance a twin engine six-passenger aircraft and remove the seats," Ms Bryant told ABC's World News Tonight programme in an interview broadcast last night.
"He said he was an engineer, and he wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting."
She told ABC the televised interview was against the wishes of her bosses. ABC says she passed a lie detector examination.
Ms Bryant said Atta used his real name when she interviewed him.
"I spelled it A-T-T-A-H, and he told me, 'No, A-T-T-A, as in 'Atta boy!'" Ms Bryant said.
She said she rejected Atta for a loan because he was not a US citizen, and then reported a bizarre conversation with the terrorist.
She told[Bryant] ABC the televised interview was against the wishes of her bosses. ABC says she passed a lie detector examination.
Maybe it is time for Al Felzenberg to get a lie detector examination.